The Los Angeles county coroner's office has begun identifying the 11 people killed in the Lunar New Year massacre inside a popular dance hall in Monterey Park, California.
Ten victims died at the scene of the Saturday shooting. Authorities said today that an 11th person died while being treated at a local hospital.
The coroner's office confirmed the names of two women - My Nhan, 65, and Lilan Li, 63 - who were among the patrons who died in the's shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio.
While not releasing the other victims' names, the coroner's office said the five women and five men who were killed were all in their 50, 60s and 70s. No information was immediately made available about the 11th victim.
Ms Nhan's family said in a written statement released on Twitter that "we are starting the Lunar New Year broken".
They said Ms Nhan, whom they remembered for her warm smile and kindness, had visited the dance studio on weekends for many years.
"It's what she loved to do," they said. "But unfairly, Saturday was her last dance."
The 72-year-old Asian man suspected of killing the 11 people before shooting himself as police moved in on him was once a regular at the dance club.
Huu Can Tran allegedly used a semi-automatic pistol to spray bullets around the Star Ballroom Dance Studio.
Twenty minutes later, he was tackled and disarmed by a young worker at another dance club, before going on the run.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said the reason behind the horrific attack - which came as Asian communities around the world celebrated Lunar New Year, the most important holiday of the calendar - remained a mystery.
"The investigation is still ongoing. Sheriff's homicide detectives are working around the clock gathering additional information and working on determining the motive behind this extremely tragic event," he said.
On Saturday January 21, 2023 at 10:22 PM the suspect male/adult/Asian pictured above was involved in a shooting. Investigators have identified him as a Homicide suspect and he should be considered armed and dangerous.
— Robert Luna (@LACoSheriff) January 22, 2023
Contact LASD Homicide with any information at 323-890-5000. pic.twitter.com/2gPUBBybvv
Mr Luna paid tribute to two people at the site of the second attempted attack.
"I can tell you that the suspect walked in there, probably with the intent to kill more people, and two brave community members decided they were going to jump into action and disarm him."
"They took possession of the weapon, and the suspect ran away."
The weapon used was not an assault rifle, Mr Luna said, but "a magazine-fed semi-automatic assault pistol... that had an extended large capacity magazine attached to it".
As the small city tried to come to terms with the tragedy, a picture of the suspect started to emerge.
Mr Tran, whose name is typically Vietnamese, emigrated to the United States from China, according to a marriage certificate his ex-wife showed CNN.
The woman, who did not want to be named, told the network she had met Mr Tran two decades ago at Star Ballroom Dance Studio, where he was a regular.
The studio, whose website says it was founded in 1990, offers classes in all types of dance.
Mr Tran's ex-wife says he introduced himself to her at the club, offering her free, informal lessons. The couple married a short time later, but the marriage did not last.
She said Tran, who sometimes worked as a truck driver, was not violent, but could be impatient, especially if he felt he was being shown up, for example by her messing up a dance step.
Court records cited by CNN show the couple were divorced in 2006.
'Year of the rabbit'
Monterey Park, only a few miles from downtown Los Angeles, is home to around 60,000 people, the majority of them Asian or Asian American.
"We don't know if this is specifically a hate crime defined by law," Mr Luna said earlier, "but who walks into a dance hall and guns down 20 people?"
The Los Angeles Times reported that Seung Won Choi, who owns a nearby restaurant, said three people had run into the establishment and told him to lock the door.
The three told Mr Choi there was a man with a semi-automatic gun who had multiple rounds of ammunition and repeatedly reloaded.
Tens of thousands of people had gathered earlier for the two-day Lunar New Year festival, one of the area's largest. Events planned last night were cancelled after the attack.
"My heart is broken for the victims, their families, and the people of my hometown," Representative Judy Chu, a former mayor of Monterey Park, said on Twitter.
Ms Chu had been at the scene, joining the festivities hours before the shooting, when the crowd was still large.
"This could have been so much worse," she said.
President Joe Biden ordered all US flags to be lowered to half-mast until Thursday in honour of the victims.
"While there is still much we don't know about the motive in this senseless attack, we do know that many families are grieving tonight, or praying that their loved one will recover from their wounds," Mr Biden said in a statement.
At a community support centre in Monterey Park, Joe Avalos of the Los Angeles Crisis Response Team said people were shaken and trying to piece together what had happened.
"We have one or two families here that have not been able to get in touch with their loved ones and they don't know if they're in the hospital or they're dead," he said.
Last year a Chinese-American gunman attacked a Taiwanese church in California, killing one and wounding five others.
The US Department of Justice said there were over 7,000 reported hate crimes in the United States in 2021, two-thirds of them race-related.
The Monterey Park shooting is the country's deadliest since a gunman in Uvalde, Texas killed 21 people at an elementary school last May.
Gun violence is a huge problem in the United States, which last year saw 647 mass shootings, with at least four people shot or killed by a shooter, according to the Gun Violence Archive website.
That was further driven home when 12 people were injured in a shooting at a nightclub overnight in Louisiana, local media reported.
More than 44,000 people died from gunshot wounds in 2022 across the United States, more than half of which were suicides.
