Police continue to puzzle over the shooting at the Monterey Park Chinese New Year party.
While investigators seek to understand what motivated Huu Can Tran, 72, to open fire on Saturday and kill 11 people (one of the wounded died this Monday) in a room in the Californian city, Brandon Tsay, 26, had to manage to attend to the press.
As in any other killing spree in the US, there is the villain and the hero. And this role is attributed to Tsay, praised for his courage in confronting the gunman and disarming him when he attempted a second crime, just 20 minutes after the other tragedy. At the Lai Lai dance hall, in the nearby town of Alhambra, closing was approaching and few were left on the dance floor when Tsay, whose family runs the business, heard the sound of the door opening. An Asian-looking man entered and pointed a semi-automatic pistol at him. "He looked around, he watched the hunt for victims, his eyes were threatening," he recounted in one of his television appearances.
“I understood that I had to take the gun from him, that it was customized and it was not for stealing. It was clear to me that I intended to cause maximum damage," he stressed. "When I had enough courage, I jumped on him, took the gun and we fought," she continued. Cameras in the business recorded that confrontation. The images made it easier to identify the attacker and revealed that he was in a white van. Hours later, the vehicle was detected in the parking lot of a commercial area in Torrance, about 45 kilometers from the tragedy. After a tense wait, the police opened the vehicle and discovered that the gunman had committed suicide with another pistol.
One of the hypotheses being considered is that Tran had attended that dance in Monterey Park before and that he would have met his ex-wife there.
