California | A shooting leaves ten dead and ten injured, the suspect still at large

(Monterey Park) A shooter opened fire on Saturday evening in the midst of Lunar New Year celebrations in a bar in a Californian city near Los Angeles mainly populated by people of Asian origin, killing 10 and injuring 10 before taking the leak, authorities said.

A manhunt has been initiated in the city of Monterey Park and in the Southern California area.

Capt. Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office told reporters that law enforcement responded to emergency calls at 10:20 p.m. Saturday (1:20 a.m. EST Sunday) and then discovered people fleeing the dance hall.

“Police entered the area and spotted 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 10 other victims who have been transported to several local hospitals and are in stable to critical conditions,” he added. “The suspect fled the scene and remains untraceable.”

Police did not provide a description of the suspect and did not specify the type of weapon he used.

Investigators are also checking information on a possible link to an attempted shooting the same evening at another dance hall in the nearby town of Alhambra, the captain added.

According to several American media, this shooting attempt was foiled, the suspect having been tackled to the ground and disarmed without causing any casualties.

Lunar New Year

Monterey Park, a city of some 61,000 mostly Asians, is located about eight miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

Tens of thousands of people had just gathered near the scene of the shooting for the Lunar New Year festivities, scheduled over two days and particularly important for the Asian community. The second day of the party was canceled on Sunday.

Monterey Park resident Wong Wei told the Los Angeles Times that her friend was in the bar and was in the bathroom when the shots broke out. When she came out, she saw an armed man and three bodies – two women and a person he identified as the owner of the dance hall.

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.

Ongoing investigation

According to Captain Meyer, investigators do not yet 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. “It is too early in the investigation to know whether this event was a hate crime or not.”

“Hate crime” traditionally refers in the United States to an act directed against a targeted person because of certain characteristics of their identity such as race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation or disability.

Being considered an aggravated federal offence, hate crime automatically carries harsher sentences: increased fines, hard labor, and even additional years of imprisonment.

According to the US Department of Justice, more than 7,000 hate crimes were recorded in the United States in 2021, affecting more than 9,000 people. Two-thirds of these crimes were related to racial identity.

The United States pays a very heavy price for the spread of firearms in 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.

The consequence of this proliferation is the very high rate of firearm deaths in the United States, unmatched by 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.