The incident occurred on Saturday night, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Ten people have been killed and at least 10 others injured when a gunman opened fire at a ballroom dance studio in Monterey Park, Los Angeles in the United States.
The incident occurred on Saturday night, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
The shooting occurred near the site of a Chinese Lunar New Year celebration. Tens of thousands had gathered Saturday for the start of a two-day festival, one of the largest Lunar New Year events in the region.
The mass shooting, one of California’s worst in recent memory, happened in the 100 block of West Garvey Avenue at around 10:22 p.m., sheriff’s Capt. Andrew Meyer told reporters Sunday morning, a report by Los Angeles Times said.
The information on the suspect describes him as a male and still at large. There is no known motive nor a description of the shooter.
“When officers arrived on scene, they observed numerous individuals, patrons ... pouring out of the location, screaming. The officers made entry to the location and located additional victims,” Meyer said.
Firefighters pronounced 10 of the victims dead at the scene, Meyer said. At least 10 others were transported to numerous local hospitals, and their conditions range from stable to critical.
Meyer said investigators don’t know whether the victims were targeted. He said it was too early to know whether the shooting was a hate crime. “We will look at every angle,” Meyer said.
He said there also no description of the weapon used other than it was a firearm.
Meyer said he’s aware of some kind of incident in the neighbouring suburb of Alhambra, north of Monterey Park, “and we have investigators on scene trying to determine if there’s a connection between these two incidents.”
Law enforcement were on scene at the Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio on the 100 block of South Garfield Avenue in Alhambra Sunday morning. It was not clear if the police activity at that site was the same one referenced by Meyer.
Seung Won Choi, who owns a seafood barbecue restaurant on Garvey Avenue across from where the shooting happened, said three people rushed into his restaurant and told him to lock the door.
They told him that there was a man with a semiautomatic gun in the area. They said the shooter had multiple rounds of ammunition on him, so that once his ammunition ran out he reloaded, Choi said.