A shooting killed several people and injured many on Saturday night in Monterey Park, a city with a large Asian community.
Source AFP
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DNine people were killed in a shootout in southern California, law enforcement authorities announced on Sunday (January 22nd). A man opened fire in a dance hall as residents celebrated the Lunar New Year, police said. The alleged perpetrator of the shooting is an Asian man, who managed to escape.
Capt. Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office told reporters he responded to emergency calls around 10:10 p.m. Saturday (0610 GMT) and discovered people fleeing the scene. “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 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 untraceable”.
During the Lunar New Year
The shooting took place at a dance hall near a Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park, a city of some 61,000 mostly Asians, located about 13 kilometers east of the downtown Los Angeles. According to Los Angeles Timestens of thousands of people had gathered earlier in the day for the two-day Chinese New Year festivities, which are among the largest in Southern California.
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.
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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. “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.
One in three adults owns at least one weapon
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 almost 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, 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.