Victims of Monterey shootings have been identified as fatalities

“He started preparing the weapon and something came over me,” the soft-spoken Tsay recalled. “We fought our way into the lobby and tried to get this weapon away from each other. He slapped my face and hit the back of my head.

“Eventually I was able to pull the gun away from him, push him aside, put some distance, point the gun at him, intimidate him and say get out of here! I will shoot! Go away! Go!”

An hours-long manhunt for Tran finally ended Sunday afternoon when tactical teams surrounded a vehicle in Torrence that matched the description of the white van in which he is believed to have fled. There they discovered him slumped in his vehicle, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The Los Angeles County coroner has now identified the first two victims: My Nhan, 65, and Lilian Li, 64.

in one tribute on twitter, Nhan’s family described her as a person whose “smile and kindness are contagious.”

“She spent so many years going to the dance studio in Monterey Park on weekends. She loved doing that,” they wrote. “But unfairly, Saturday was her last dance. We start the new lunar year broken. We never thought her life would end so suddenly.”

The Monterey Park mass shooting was the 33rd this year and the worst since the Uvalde tragedy last May, which killed 19 children and two teachers when a 21-year-old gun opened fire on Robb Elementary School in south Texas .

The latest incident occurred during the weekend’s Lunar New Year celebrations and initially fueled fears of yet another hate crime against the Asian-American community, which has seen a surge in violence and discrimination since the pandemic.

While Trans-Asian origin has made the likely motive less clear, authorities say “everything is on the table” to identify the motive.

As investigators pieced together more details, it emerged that Tran had recently contacted police in Hemet, where he lived in a trailer park, to say his family poisoned him.

According to a Hemet Police Department statement, on Jan. 7 and 9, he visited the local police station “where he made allegations of fraud, theft and poisoning involving his family in the Los Angeles area 10 to 20 years ago.” . Tran stated he would return to the station with paperwork, but never returned.”

In Washington, President Joe Biden ordered American flags to be flown at half-mast on federal government property by Thursday morning “as a mark of respect for the victims of senseless acts of violence.”

Back at the dance studio, a tight-knit community continues to mourn and some question what it will take to thwart America’s gun violence epidemic.

“I don’t want to take away weapons, but maybe we could learn from other countries, you know?” says Jan Alejandro. “It’s so frustrating because it doesn’t matter who’s in the White House or in Congress, they don’t get anything done.”

School bus driver Inez Arakaki also came with her nine-year-old son Zachary to commemorate the victims.

“He said it would be nice to live in a place without guns,” says Arakaki The Sydney Morning Herald and Age.

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“I drive by here every day on my school bus. I know kids in the area. Its scary. It’s scary to imagine that thousands of people were here at the Lunar New Year Festival at 9am [just before the shooting].

“They came out to celebrate, especially after the pandemic. Everyone was locked inside and didn’t want to come out because of what was going on — and then this happened. It’s devastating.”

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