Evening summary: Monterey Park shooter dead, motive under investigation
The shooter who killed 10 people at a ballroom dance studio in Monterey Park, California on Saturday night was a 72-year-old Asian man whose motive for the attack is still under investigation, authorities said on Sunday evening.
The shooter himself is now dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, after being pulled over by law enforcement officers in the nearby town of Torrance, California, on Sunday morning, Los Angeles county sheriff Robert Luna said.
Some key updates:
The names of the 10 victims killed in Monterey Park have not yet been released, but Luna said many of them were in their 50s, 60s, or older. It’s not yet clear when the names of the dead will be announced, or whether their next of kin have been notified: Luna said the coroner was still working to identify the victims.
Luna and local politicians hailed the heroism of two community members at a second dance venue in Alhambra, California, who they said managed to disarm the gunman when he appeared there on Saturday night after the Monterey Park shooting, likely saving many lives.
The guns used by the shooter are still under investigation. At least one, a semi-automatic assault pistol with a high-capacity magazine, initially appeared to be illegal in California. How the shooter obtained the weapons, and whether they were obtained legally or illegally, is still unclear.
Monterey Park was the 33rd mass shooting in the United States in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as any violent incident in which at least four people are shot and wounded, whether or not they are killed.
Asked about the country’s problem with gun violence, Luna noted that California has, in the American context, relatively strict gun control laws. “The status quo’s not working,” he said. “We need to re-examine what we’re doing and what may work better.”
Updated
At least one gun used by Monterey Park shooter may be illegal in California
One of the shooter’s weapons, recovered after community members at a second dance studio in a nearby town managed to disarm him, was described by sheriff Robert Luna as a magazine-fed semiautomatic assault pistol with a high capacity magazine attached.
While investigation into the shooter’s weapons is still ongoing, “I believe the weapon recovered at the Alhambra location is not legal in the state of California,” Luna said.
California, the first state in the nation to attempt to ban military-style “assault weapons,” prohibits certain kinds of semi-automatic handguns that accept or have larger ammunition magazines, as well as certain kinds of semi-automatic rifles.
Californa’s assault weapon ban was passed in 1989, after an attack on a school in Stockton, where five children died, most of them the children of Cambodian refugees.
