On Sunday, a gunman killed ten people at a ballroom dance club near Los Angeles during a Chinese Lunar New Year party before fleeing the scene and committing suicide when confronted by authorities.

Sheriff Robert Luna of Los Angeles County stated that the motivation for the shooting is unknown. The culprit was 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, who possessed a pistol with a high-capacity magazine.

The sheriff stated, "We want to know; we want to know how something this awful can happen,"

Sheriff Luna stated that Tran turned the handgun on himself as officers approached the white van he was driving near Torrance, approximately 34 kilometres from the shooting scene at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park.

Saturday night, while tens of thousands of people were celebrating the Lunar New Year at Monterey Park, 13 kilometres east of downtown Los Angeles, a gunshot occurred.

Capt. Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department stated, "When officers arrived on the scene, they observed a large number of individuals, patrons... fleeing the location yelling." "The officers made entry to the location and located additional victims."

Capt. Meyer stated that detectives have yet to ascertain if the victims were intended targets and that it was too early to determine if the shooting was motivated by bias.

"Every angle will be considered," he stated.

Seung Won Choi told the Los Angeles Times that three individuals entered his seafood restaurant and advised him to shut the door because a man armed with a machine gun was nearby.

The Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, monitors the situation and receives information. He expressed his sympathy via Twitter.

Monterey Park has approximately 60,000 people and is home to many Asian Americans.

After the incident, Juno Blees posted a photo of her injured father in a hospital bed on Twitter. She reported her mother to be missing.

The annual two-day event is one of the largest in southern California.

Numerous police officers and helicopters were dispatched to the scene.

On camera, injured partygoers on stretchers were loaded into ambulances.

Many mistook the gunfire for fireworks before realizing an attack was in progress.

Los Angeles city controller Kenneth Mejia tweeted, "Our hearts go out to those who lost loved ones tonight in our neighbouring city, Monterey Park, where a mass shooting just occurred,"

Violence and anti-Asian attitude increased in the United States during the coronavirus outbreak, which began in Wuhan, China.

Donald Trump, Mr Biden's predecessor, frequently referred to the illness as the "China virus" or the "Kung flu" These words have been interpreted as inciting conservative Americans to resent Asians.

An AAPI Data and Momentive survey revealed that 1 in 6 Asian-American individuals suffered a hate crime in the past year, up from 1 in 8 in 2020.