Ten people have died and at least 10 others been wounded in a mass shooting in a largely Asian city in southern California, law enforcement said Sunday, with the suspect still at large hours later.
The gunman opened fire at a dance venue in Monterey Park, as the local community were celebrating Lunar New Year, police said.
Captain Andrew Meyers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said officers had responded to emergency calls around 10:20pm on Saturday and found people pouring out of the premises.
Footage posted on social media showed injured people on stretchers being taken to ambulances by emergency staff.
Around the scene of the shooting – reported to have been at a dance club – police guarded cordoned-off streets, the video showed.
Tens of thousands of people had gathered earlier in the day for the two-day Lunar New Year festival, which is one of the largest in southern California.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Seung Won Choi, who owns a seafood barbecue restaurant near the scene said three people had run into his restaurant and told him to lock the door.
The paper quoted the owner as saying that people who sought shelter in his property told him there was a man with a machine gun in the area.
“Our hearts go out to those who lost loved ones tonight in our neighboring city, Monterey Park, where a mass shooting just occurred,” Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia said in a tweet.
Monterey Park, is home to around 61,000 people, the majority of them Asian or Asian American.
Gun violence is a huge problem in the United States, which saw 647 mass shootings last year, according to the Gun Violence Archive website, defined as an incident with four or more people shot or killed, not including the shooter.