Police: Gunman at large after killing 10 near LA – Boston News, Weather, Sports

MONTEREY PARK, Calif. (AP) — A gunman killed 10 people and wounded 10 others at a Los Angeles-area ballroom dance club after a Lunar New Year celebration, sparking a manhunt for the suspect in the recent mass shooting tragedy in an American community.

Capt. Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said Sunday the wounded were taken to hospitals and their condition ranges from stable to critical. He said the 10 people died at the scene in the city of Monterey Park.

Meyer said people “stormed out of the scene screaming” when officers arrived at the scene around 10:30 p.m. He said officers then went into the dance ballroom while firefighters tended to the wounded.

The Lunar New Year celebrations had drawn thousands. Monterey Park is a city of approximately 60,000 people with a large Asian population located approximately 10 miles from downtown Los Angeles.

It was the fifth mass shooting in the United States this month and the deadliest since 21 people were killed at a school in Uvalde, Texas, according to The Associated Press/USA Today database of US mass killings. The latest violence comes two months after five people were killed at a Colorado Springs nightclub.

Seung Won Choi, who owns the Clam House seafood barbecue restaurant across the street from where the shooting took place, told the Los Angeles Times that three people burst into his shop and told him to open the door to lock.

People also told Choi that there was a gunman with a gun who had several rounds of ammunition on him. Choi said he believes the shooting took place at a dance club.

Wong Wei, who lives nearby, shared The Los Angeles Times that his friend was in a bathroom at a dance club the night the shooting started. When she came out, he said, she saw a gunman and three bodies.

The friend then fled to his home around 11 p.m., Wei said, adding that his friends told him that the gunman had fired a long gun, seemingly indiscriminately. “They don’t know why, so they run away,” he told the newspaper.

The shooting happened near a place where thousands of people had attended a New Year celebration. Saturday marked the start of the two-day festival, which is one of Southern California’s largest Lunar New Year events.

Videos posted on social media showed people being loaded onto stretchers and taken into ambulances. Other photos showed bloodied and bandaged victims being treated by Monterey Park firefighters in a parking lot.

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Associated Press writer Julie Watson in San Diego contributed to this report.

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