Ten people were killed and at least 10 others injured in a shooting Saturday night in Monterey Park, a Southern California town with a majority Asian population, law enforcement officials said Sunday. , stating that the suspect is still at large.
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A man opened fire in a dance hall as residents celebrated the Lunar New Year, police said.
Capt. Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office told reporters he responded to emergency calls around 10:10 p.m. (0610 GMT) on Saturday and discovered people fleeing the scene.
AFP
“Police entered the area and located additional victims,” he said. The emergency services “treated the injured and declared the death of 10 of the victims on the spot”.
“There are at least ten other victims who have been transported to several local hospitals and are in stable to critical conditions,” he added. Several hours after the shooting, “the suspect fled the scene and remains nowhere to be found”.
Police did not provide a description of the suspect and did not specify the type of weapon he used.
Monterey Park, a city of some 61,000 inhabitants, mostly of Asian origin, is located about 13 km east of downtown Los Angeles.
AFP
According to The Los Angeles Times, tens of thousands of people had gathered near the scene of the shooting for the two-day festivities, which are among the largest of their kind in Southern California.
Monterey Park resident Wong Wei told the Los Angeles Times that his friend was in the club and was in the bathroom when the gunfire broke out. When she came out, she saw an armed man and three bodies — two women and a person he identified as the club boss.
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The daily also quotes Seung Won Choi, the owner of a nearby restaurant, as saying that three people ran into the establishment and told him to lock the door.
These three people said that there was a man with a semi-automatic rifle and loaded with ammunition who reloaded his weapon regularly, the restaurateur told the newspaper.
According to Captain Meyer, investigators do not know if the suspect knew the victims or if it was an attack targeting a community.
“We will investigate all possibilities,” he told reporters, adding that officers were reviewing CCTV footage.
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“It is too early in the investigation to know whether this incident was a hate crime or not.”
Investigators are also checking information on a possible link to an attempted shooting in a similar setting in nearby Alhambra, the captain added.
The United States pays a very heavy price for the dissemination of firearms on its territory and the ease with which Americans have access to them.
The country has more individual weapons than inhabitants: one in three adults owns at least one weapon and nearly one in two adults lives in a home where there is a weapon.
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The consequence of this proliferation is the very high rate of death by firearm in the United States, without comparison with that of other developed countries.
Around 49,000 people died from gunshot wounds in 2021, compared to 45,000 in 2020, which was already a record year. This represents more than 130 deaths per day, more than half of which are suicides.