Finalist: Staff of the Los Angeles Times

By Brittny Mejia, Gabriel San Román and Debbie Truong

Star Ballroom Dance Studio is where international ballroom competitors teach their moves. Where retirees learn how to waltz, tango and samba. Where elderly and middle-aged couples while away Saturday nights.

Where they feel safe. And happy.

“They’re mainly just there to enjoy life and hang out and have fun,” said 40-year-old Elizabeth Yang, who has taken ballroom classes at the studio for a year.

All that changed late Saturday night on the eve of the Lunar New Year, a time to welcome prosperity, health and good luck.

The studio had scheduled a Lunar New Year’s Eve party for 8 p.m. Saturday. It was supposed to end at 12:30 a.m. Sunday. A message in the dance studio’s WeChat group advertised a “Chinese New Year Countdown Dance Party,” with games and a photo booth.

But around 10:20 p.m., 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, armed with a semiautomatic pistol, stormed into the studio. The shooting began. The celebration stopped.

And moments later, 10 people were dead. At least 10 others were injured.

The community was left reeling as the motive for the violence remained unclear.

“These dance clubs are such establishments of joy for people,” said U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), who has lived in the city for 37 years and previously served as mayor three times. “These are folks who are getting their exercise, they’re developing their skills. ... They just enjoy coming.”

Dariusz Michalski, who has taught private and group lessons at the dance studio for 12 years, said he believes the studio’s community of teachers and students will find the strength to carry on, despite the tragedy.

“It’s going to take time to heal,” Michalski said. “But the love for dancing will bring us back together. We won’t let anything like this happen again to take our happiness away.”

Star Ballroom Dance Studio, founded 30 years ago, is a fixture in the city.

Monterey Park Mayor Henry Lo and Councilman Thomas Wong haven’t been to the ballroom, but both said it’s a popular dance hall for Chinese American immigrants.

“It’s been there for years,” Wong said. “It’s been well-known in the community for a while.”

Although the demographic of the ballroom skews older, Lo said, the place attracts young and old alike — as people look for a place to socialize, especially in a group setting.

International ballroom competitors teach waltz, tango and Chinese dance classes. Instructors described a spacious studio, which — along with dancing — offers party room rentals and karaoke happy hour.

More than 10,000 square feet of floor space make it “one of the largest dance studios in town,” according to Star’s website, which estimates that the studio has served more than 10,000 students.

Here, Michalski, 50, teaches ballroom dancing styles five days a week. Originally from Poland, he said he felt welcomed by his students, who are mostly Chinese American.

Monterey Park, a city of 61,000 in the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles, is 65% Asian American, 27% Latino and 6% white, according to census data.

“Star Ballroom is where people go to de-stress from daily routines and from work,” Michalski said. “The studio owner always smiled and welcomed everyone. We felt like a very big Monterey Park dance family.”

Walter Calderon, a dance teacher in L.A. and Orange counties, said the crowds on Saturdays are a mix of seniors and middle-aged people. The playlist would include many songs in Chinese, he said.

Around 10:22 p.m. Saturday, the Monterey Park Police Department responded to a “shots fired” call at the studio, officials said. When officers arrived, there were victims in the parking lot and patrons trying to flee.

Inside, they found numerous gunshot victims. Firefighters pronounced 10 people dead at the scene, L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna said. He said the victims, five men and five women, were probably “in their 50s, 60s and some maybe even beyond there.”

As of Sunday afternoon, seven victims were still hospitalized.

Authorities believe that, after opening fire at the Monterey Park studio, the gunman went to Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio in Alhambra, about two miles north. Two community members disarmed the suspect there, Luna said. He called them “heroes.”

On Sunday, Torrance police officers located a white van matching the description of the suspect’s vehicle. As they pulled behind it, the driver entered a shopping center parking lot, Luna said. As the officers exited their vehicle, they heard a gunshot from inside.

Tran was pronounced dead at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A search of the van turned up evidence linking him to the locations in Monterey Park and Alhambra, Luna said. He did not share what that evidence was.

“We still are not clear on the motive,” Luna said. “We want to know how something this awful can happen.”

Yang, who owns a law office building across the street from the studio, has been taking ballroom dancing lessons at Star on Monday nights.

She was celebrating Lunar New Year’s Eve, exchanging red envelopes and eating dinner with family at home when she started receiving texts from friends who were worried about her after news of the shooting broke.

David DuVal, who has taught at the studio for 10 years, said one of his students was there during the shooting and hid under a table. His student said she saw a man with a “long firearm.” She doesn’t know what he looked like.

“It’s just hard to imagine,” he said. “It’s such a safe place.”

DuVal taught samba and tango at the studio Thursday. Many of his students are older. He said there are couples that have been going to the studio for a decade or more. Retirees taking classes to stay healthy. Some are in their 90s, he said, “and still dancing.”

“It’s old people dancing to music for fun,” he said. “It’s their exercise.”

He called Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio the “sister studio” of Star. He said the same people go to both dance halls.

On the night of the shooting, Michalski was in Garden Grove for a gala dinner dance he had organized with his wife.

Star‘s owner joined them at the event, along with others from the studio. But some studio members stayed behind in Monterey Park. They wanted to celebrate Chinese New Year at the countdown dance party in the place they loved.

Michalski didn’t learn of the mass shooting until the morning after, when he awoke to messages on his phone about the tragedy from the dance community across the nation, whose members wondered if he was safe.

He had to stop to compose himself when speaking about a student he had taught for several years, a man believed to be one of the 10 people slain. His former student helped manage Star and was affectionately known by all as “Mr. Ma.”

“It was heartbreaking,” Michalski said. “We are just speechless and cannot find the words to describe how we feel right now.”

In a Facebook post, Lauren Woods, another dance instructor, called “Mr. Ma” the heart of the studio. She wrote, “Ma was everything at Star and we were always so connected with him.”

When Ma would see her, she wrote, he’d say, “my teacher,” kiss her cheeks and say, “Love you! Love you!”

“He was so adorable to me and I could tell he was the heart of Star Ballroom,” she said. “So many dancers, teachers and organizers were connected with Ma and I personally will miss him dearly.”

A screenshot of the studio WeChat shared with The Times included comments from Maria Liang, who is described as the owner on the Star website. Liang said she was not present.

She acknowledged Ma’s death and said she was talking with his children “about a grand farewell.”

Times staff writers Jeong Park, Richard Winton and Julia Wick contributed to this report.

By Summer Lin, Brittny Mejia, Rebecca Ellis, Lorena Iñiguez Elebee, Sean Greene and Vanessa Martínez

The four smiling women pose before a festive backdrop, with its outsize clinking champagne glasses and clock about to strike midnight. They wear red, a symbol of good luck.

Shally wears flared black pants decorated with crystals. The 57-year-old has on a bob-cut wig “to make it special.” This is a Lunar New Year’s Eve party, after all.

An hour after that photo was taken, around 10:20 p.m., a 72-year-old man walked into Star Ballroom Dance Studio armed with a semiautomatic pistol. As he started spraying bullets, dancers confused the gunfire with fireworks.

But people began dropping to the floor. Screams rang out.

From her vantage point, hiding under a table, Ren could see a “very long” gun and the shooter in dark clothing.

The 57-year-old had a single thought: “My life will end here.”

When the gunfire stopped, 10 people had been killed. Another died in a hospital.

Two of the women in the photo had been shot. One died.

The attack shattered the dance community of Monterey Park, a storied hub of Southern California’s Chinese community.

Accounts from witnesses inside, many who asked not to be identified by their full names, paint a clearer picture of the evening’s horror, as dozens gathered to celebrate the most important holiday of the year.

Star Ballroom Dance Studio on Garvey Avenue in Monterey Park is well known to the middle-aged and senior population of the San Gabriel Valley.

Tucked into a strip mall, it sits beside Traditional Guilin Noodles restaurant. Green and white awnings shade windows that face into the ballroom. A sign out front boasts a Korean long drum dancing class, taught by a renowned Korean dancer.

A message in the studio’s WeChat group advertised a “Chinese New Year Countdown Dance Party,” set for Jan. 21. It was supposed to end at 12:30 a.m.

That night, the studio was decorated for the occasion. The photo backdrop hung beneath red letters that spelled out “Star Ballroom.” It was flanked by balloon arches.

When Ren arrived about 7:30 p.m., Ming Wei Ma was still placing numbers on each table. The regulars were familiar by then with 72-year-old Ma, a beloved “boss” at the studio. He was the kind of gentleman who’d walk women to their car if dance classes ended late at night.

“How many of you?” Ma asked Ren.

“Five,” she replied. The group included her friend Niu, who had been to the dance studio a few times.

Ma asked where they’d like to sit, and Ren pointed to a table near a mirror in the far back left side of the room. A different table from where she normally sat. Ma labeled it with her name.

Shally arrived soon after, at around 8 p.m. She greeted other guests with “gōng xǐ fā cái,” wishing them prosperity.

She hadn’t bought a ticket, so she told a friend she would repay her if she covered the $15 entry fee. Shally asked for a square table near the dance floor, where she sat alone.

Her husband doesn’t dance and didn’t join her. The one condition of their three-year marriage, she said, was that she could go dancing on the weekends. She had taken a cha-cha class at Star 15 years ago and never stopped dancing.

Through Star, she met Yu Lun Kao, who she knew as Andy. He’d been her dance partner for more than a decade. To her, he was “Mr. Nice.” Any weekend she called him to say she was dancing, he would join her.

“Any hour we had time, we never waste the time. We had to come dancing,” Shally said. “Only dancing make you happy.”

Although her partner didn’t arrive for another hour, Shally didn’t wait to start moving. Over the years, she had learned the men’s and women’s dance steps so there would be “no need to wait for the man.”

She took two women she knew for a spin on the floor, losing herself in the movement. When you dance, she said, “you forget everything.”

Tony, 64, and Jennifer, 62, regulars at the studio for the past decade, arrived about 8 p.m. They sat near the entrance before spotting an empty table and asking Ma if they could move. He said yes and put them off in a corner, far from the front of the dance hall.

Jennifer asked Ma to play a song so the couple could dance the tango.

Xiujuan Yu, 57, had never been to Star before the Lunar New Year celebration. A friend had called and told her about the festivities. Yu decided to go with LiLan Li, 63, and a third friend.

Nikon Lou, an Alhambra resident, met three friends there. The women said they had only one male partner to dance with and urged Lou to join. They sat away from the front entrance, near an exit door. Lou snapped the photo of Shally and her friends.

There were around 50 or 60 people there that night, much fewer than the hundreds Shally remembered turning up for the recent Christmas party.

Among them was Mymy Nhan, 65, who attended dance classes at the studio as often as she could. Her longtime dance instructor saw her as “the light of the class and the light of the studio.” She was a fixture at Star on Saturday nights.

Although the Lunar New Year party was set to go past midnight, Nhan decided to leave early.

She wanted to set up the family shrine to pay homage to her ancestors.

Huu Can Tran had been to the dance studio. But he hadn’t been a familiar face for at least five years.

On this cold winter night, he was armed with a semiautomatic MAC-10 assault weapon.

Tran appeared to be spiraling over the last few weeks.

He’d shown up twice to the Hemet Police Department, near his home, alleging that family members had tried to poison him decades earlier. He also claimed to have been the victim of fraud and theft. He never returned with evidence.

Tran had amassed hundreds of rounds of ammunition in his trailer park home, along with supplies to make homemade firearm suppressors, which muffle the sound of a weapon firing.

Earlier that Saturday, Tran had parked a motorcycle about a block from the dance studio. Authorities believe it was part of an escape plan.

As Tran prepared to enter the studio, Nhan and her dance partner readied to leave. She was in the parking lot, backing out, when she saw someone in the rearview mirror. It was Tran.

He approached the driver’s side of her car and fired multiple times. Nhan slumped in the front seat, dead. Her dance partner, who hadn’t been shot, didn’t recognize the gunman.

Tran turned his attention to the studio.

On the dance floor inside, Shally and Andy were dancing a lively and fast-paced jive. Nearby, dozens of people line danced to the Chinese song “Light Rain in March.”

Ren’s dance instructor corrected her moves. He asked her to face the mirror to see how to improve her form.

Niu, Ren’s friend, had rushed to the front of the room to learn the steps from another instructor. The entrance to the dance studio was to Niu’s right.

Xiujuan Yu’s friend needed to use the restroom and left the dance floor.

Tony and Jennifer were sitting at their table, taking a break.

The revelers were so enthralled by the dancing, they didn’t see Tran walk in. When he began to shoot, they mistook the gunfire for Chinese firecrackers. They had heard those at past celebrations.

Niu saw a couple beside him fall to the floor. He thought they had slipped. He was about nine feet from the front desk and could smell gunpowder, a similar scent to firecrackers.

“After that, you hear the sound and it’s not right,” Shally said. “This one was like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It did not stop.”

Near Niu, a man yelled, “Gunshots!”

Niu ducked to the ground and began crawling away from the entrance, to the left corner of the hall. He made his way into a storage room, a tiny 1½ by 3 feet.

“Hurry up, get into the room,” someone said.

Niu was halfway in when several women followed, crawling in and piling on top of him. There were about five or six people squeezed inside. They didn’t dare move.

Outside, everyone, including Ma, was on the ground.

After the first shot, Tony was hit with debris from something that had shattered nearby. Jennifer was also hit in the leg with flying fragments.

The couple ducked under a table and lay still on the ground. Others started running, looking for a place to hide.

“People were falling and bleeding,” Tony said.

The music kept playing.

After the gunshots rang out, Lou saw a man nearby frozen in place, the only person still standing. Lou rushed over and pulled him to the floor.

Shally grabbed Andy’s hand and pulled him under a table. They held onto each other.

From there, Shally saw the shooter stop and disappear from view. When he came back, she watched him reload the gun, his face angry.

“Please, don’t say anything,” she whispered to Andy, who appeared poised to speak. “Just lay down.”

Terrified, Shally squeezed her eyes shut. She said a silent prayer: “Please, protect us.”

Chaos spilled over outside of the studio and into the streets of Monterey Park, a largely Asian enclave less than 10 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

Three people ran into The Clam House, a seafood barbecue restaurant across the street from the carnage. It was one of the last places open late at night.

“Lock the door,” they pleaded with the restaurant owner, Seung Won Choi. There was a man with a gun, they said. The shooter had multiple rounds of ammunition.

Their faces were pale with terror — “hot white,” Choi said.

A little after 10:19 p.m., Bill was sitting in his Toyota truck, Snapchatting his girlfriend and blaring “Ghetto Bird” by Ice Cube. The 20-year-old had just stopped by the Bank of America ATM, three doors from Star Dance Studio, en route to his girlfriend’s house.

Just as he was about to drive away, a panicked half-dozen people charged toward his truck. Most looked older than 60. He watched as two people stood on his back wheel and hopped into the truck’s bed. An older man knocked on his front window.

“You need to drive,” the man told him. “There’s danger.”

Bill helped the older man get into the back of the truck along with three or four others. They were screaming in a language Bill didn’t understand.

He assumed they were running from a fight, or maybe a fire. It was only as he left the parking lot that he realized what they were escaping. He heard gunfire.

“Drive! Drive! Drive!” the man yelled.

While Tran reloaded, Lou raced out of the studio’s side exit. Before Lou reached the bottom of the wheelchair ramp, he heard the shooting start anew. He ran through the parking lot and — at 10:22 p.m. — he called 911.

The dispatcher said he was the first to call.

Tran fired 42 rounds over several minutes. After he left, no one moved.

Then, Tony said, someone turned on the light. The music stopped. Jennifer spotted Ma lying by a mirror. She’d recognized his red shirt.

Xiujuan Yu’s friend had heard loud noises outside the bathroom. She crept out onto the dance floor. She saw Yu sprawled on the hardwood floor and Li slumped in the chair.

Underneath a nearby table, Shally called out to her dance partner: “Wake up! Wake up!”

He didn’t respond. Then she realized her hands were covered in blood.

“What happened?” she screamed. She thought she’d been shot.

A woman next to Shally told her that, if she could yell, she was OK. She asked Shally to call 911. Shally told the dispatcher that a lot of people were injured, and there were “bodies dead on the floor.”

“Please come right away,” she said.

Within minutes of the 911 calls, Monterey Park police officers — including rookies who had been on patrol for just months — rushed to the scene. They saw dozens of people fleeing, some injured.

Niu got up when he heard the police arrive. Outside the storage room, he saw a man had been shot and was bleeding from his stomach. As he took a few more steps, Niu saw more injured people on the ground.

“Each time I stepped forward, I would find a person on the ground,” Niu said.

The blood on Shally’s hand wasn’t her own. It was Andy’s. Her dance partner had been shot in the chest. He died, lying on the floor beside her.

The gunman was gone. He had shot 10 people to death. At least 10 others were injured.

Tran’s next stop was Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio in Alhambra. There, Brandon Tsay, whose family owns the studio, wrested the gun from the shooter’s hands.

Twelve hours later, Tran sat in his van in a Torrance strip mall parking lot. As officers closed in on him, he shot himself to death.

Questions remain about the gunman’s motives. Chances are, there will be no answers.

Those who were in the dance studio are wrestling with a question of their own. They wonder if they’ll ever be able to return to the place they once loved.

Ren doesn’t think she will go back to the ballroom on Garvey Avenue. For a while, she said, she’ll stop dancing altogether.

About this story

The Times interviewed six survivors — the majority of them in Mandarin — to piece together what happened inside Star Ballroom Dance Studio on Lunar New Year’s Eve. We connected with dance instructors and dancers who did not attend the party, but who helped reporters understand the layout of the studio. We reviewed videos and photos taken inside Star the night of the shooting and in the months prior. We listened to dispatch recordings to help establish a timeline. Star Ballroom Dance Studio floor plan provided by the Monterey Park City Clerk's Office.

This story was reported and written by Summer Lin, Brittny Mejia and Rebecca Ellis, with graphics by Lorena Iñiguez Elebee, Sean Greene and Vanessa Martínez. Times staff writers Jeong Park and Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this story. Additional production by Jackeline Luna and Katie Licari. Audio recordings of Shally come from an interview recorded by Times photographer Irfan Khan the day after the shooting. Audio production by Mark Nieto. Video edited by Robert Meeks. Story edited by Maria La Ganga. Graphics edited by George LeVines. Art direction by Taylor Le and Alex Tatusian. Copy-edited by Kevin Ueda. Mary Kate Metivier and Maneeza Iqbal planned the promotion and engagement.

By Summer Lin

He was walking by himself, in no particular direction. Then the corner of his eye caught the sun and glinted for a moment — an unfallen tear.

My colleague had approached him, asking if he lived nearby. He shook his head, replied, “No” and kept moving.

“Would you mind if I tried talking to him?” I asked, and she urged me on. It was Jan. 22, and we were in Monterey Park the day after a mass shooting had stolen the lives of 11 people, devastating a mostly Chinese community in the process.

I ran after him and then I stopped, watching as he trained his eyes on my face, analyzing my features. I introduced myself in Mandarin and told him I was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Could I ask a few questions about the shooting?

He may have nodded yes, so I started in.

“Do you live around here?” I asked.

He pointed to the house right behind us — a pale yellow, single-story home with white blinds. He could hear the American accent in my voice and switched to English. He told me he hadn’t been home at the time, but his mother was, and she heard what she thought were firecrackers in the distance. They lived near Star Ballroom Dance Studio, he said, where the shooting took place.

I asked if he’d known anyone who had been dancing at the studio, if he knew anyone who had been there that night. He wiped his face and said no, he didn’t know much about it.

“Are you Chinese?” he asked.

“I was born here,” I said, “but my parents moved here from China.”

“ABC,” he said with a hint of a smile. “American Born Chinese. Just like my daughter.”

Right before we parted ways, he told me his American name was Ben.

I’d been asleep when my editor called at 11:20 p.m. It was the eve of Lunar New Year. When I called him back, he picked up on the first ring. There had been a mass shooting in Monterey Park, he told me, with as many as 10 people killed.

Could I go to the scene?

I threw on whatever clothes were closest and quickly looked up the news of the shooting on my phone. When the reports mentioned Monterey Park, most of them added that it was “known as the first suburban Chinatown.”

My heart sank.

During the 17-minute drive, every scenario bounced around in my head. I thought of the Atlanta spa shootings and the spate of anti-Asian hate crimes at the height of the pandemic. During that time, I carried around pepper spray and wore sneakers, hoping I might have a shot at outrunning a potential attacker. I’d never had any interest in martial arts, but I started tagging along with my boyfriend to his self-defense classes.

I stayed on the scene with several other reporters for hours, speaking to nearby residents, business owners and even one person whose younger sister had been at the dance studio during the shooting. When I woke up later that day, police had confirmed that 10 people were killed (another would die in the hospital of injuries from the shooting) and that the suspected gunman was a 72-year-old Asian man.

I looked up his photo online.

My first thought was that he could be my grandfather.

The timeline of my generation is littered with mass shootings. When I was in sixth grade, a survivor of the Columbine High School massacre visited my middle school to give a presentation during an assembly. The Virginia Tech shooting happened a year later; a friend’s brother attended the Blacksburg, Va., school, and it felt personal.

When I was a freshman in college, a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing more than 20 schoolchildren and staff members. A month after I graduated, nearly 50 people were fatally shot at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. A few months before I started as a reporter at the Mercury News, 10 people were killed at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority rail yard in San Jose.

As a journalist in the U.S., I knew covering a mass shooting was a matter of when, not if. I had braced myself for the possibility that I might be covering shootings at music festivals, concerts, movie theaters, nightclubs, churches and big-box stores, shootings where the perpetrator was usually a man with a gun.

It never occurred to me that the first mass shooting I covered would take place in my community.

The 48 hours after that first call were a blur. I knocked on doors and stopped people on the street, introducing myself in Mandarin. I saw the flicker of recognition when they looked at my Chinese face, followed by a wall of detachment when I explained I was a journalist hoping to ask them about the shooting.

Some people waved me away, saying they weren’t at the dance studio that night and didn’t know anyone who had been. Others emphasized that this was supposed to be a “safe” city, that they’d never heard of any shootings in Monterey Park before Jan. 21.

Some part of me felt guilty — that I was intruding on this once-quiet and private community, and the people who agreed to speak with me were sharing their stories only because I was one of them. When I had finished a particularly tough interview with a survivor and thanked her for her time, she responded in Mandarin: “Méi wèntí. Wǒmen dōu shì péngyǒu.”

“No problem, we’re all friends.”

Hearing that made me want to cry.

Later, I asked the dance instructor who had helped me set up the interviews if he believed that talking about what happened was cathartic for the survivors.

“Are we helping these people or are we making their lives worse?” I asked, more to myself than to him.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve been wondering the same thing myself.”

I was torn. I wanted to give the survivors and the family members of the victims space and time to heal on their own. I knew that many of them, particularly those in the older generation, were uncomfortable speaking with the press.

I wanted to treat them with as much compassion and sensitivity as possible, to let them know that they were more than a headline, that their community should be singled out for more than this tragic event. I felt a duty to portray the survivors as individuals with backstories just as rich as my grandparents’.

During the late 1990s, my mother’s parents emigrated from China to my small hometown in Pennsylvania, about 40 minutes from Philadelphia. They didn’t know anything about the U.S. and felt safest and most comfortable in their home country. But when my mother asked them to help take care of my sister and me, they came without question.

My grandparents were the ones who took care of me after school, who cooked me tomato egg with rice, who taught me how to count to 10 and how to tell time in Mandarin.

They barely spoke any English. When some of the neighborhood kids would knock on my door to ask if I could come out to play — or to just say hello — my grandmother would shake her head and tell them in Mandarin that she couldn’t understand them. Then she would close the door.

There were almost no other Chinese people in my town, and they were homesick, yearning to be with people outside of our family who spoke Mandarin and ate their same food. When my English proficiency surpassed my Chinese, I started to feel guilty that my ability to communicate with them was declining.

I also started to realize that even though we spent so much time together, I didn’t know much about my grandparents. They rarely shared anything personal. Years after my grandmother had passed away and my grandfather had moved back to China, I finally learned — through my mother — that my grandmother had once been a professor.

When I spoke with the family members of the victims and the survivors of the shooting, I saw their faces. I saw them as a door was closed and hands waved me away. I saw them in the face of the gunman, and wondered if social isolation or the crush of loneliness could have driven him to commit such a heinous act.

I also saw their faces as I attended vigils for the victims and heard residents speak about how important Monterey Park was to them as an Asian enclave. My grandparents would have loved to have had a community like this one, a place where they could find the groceries that reminded them of home and all the store signs were in Chinese. A place where they could learn to dance with other people their age on the weekends.

My mother once told me that most Chinese immigrants, especially people in their 60s and older, just wanted to work, make new lives for themselves in the U.S. and keep quiet. They weren’t comfortable expressing their emotions. And, even if they’d wanted to, the language barrier typically isolated them from much of American society.

That contrasted sharply with my own experiences as an Asian American who was learning to address the stigma surrounding mental health issues in our community and to initiate difficult conversations about intergenerational trauma.

The inability to open up stayed with me as I continued to interview sources in an attempt to piece together what happened that night at Star Dance.

Some people appeared eager to tell me exactly how they had escaped the gunman. Others teared up as they recounted how longtime friends were shot and killed in front of them. I found myself crying along with many of them.

Most of all, my heart ached when survivors asked me not to use their last names, because they hadn’t told their own family they’d been at the dance studio that night. They didn’t want them to worry. If my grandparents had been there, they probably wouldn’t have told me either.

By Connor Sheets and Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee

Six months after a gunman killed 11 people at a Monterey Park dance studio, the City Council unanimously approved legislation to drastically limit where gun dealers are permitted in the San Gabriel Valley enclave.

The battle over gun rights has filled headlines and courtrooms, and yet no one showed up at City Hall to address the ordinance. No residents, no advocates, no lawyers.

“We didn’t really have any public comment,” Mayor Jose Sanchez said, adding that he received only “one or two emails” after the August vote. “Either it was a slow night or people just didn’t oppose it.”

Cities across Los Angeles County are considering — and in many cases approving — sweeping changes to how and where they allow firearms dealers to operate. Meanwhile, daily gun violence and mass shootings continue. Just Wednesday, a gunman opened fire at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, killing three people.

Some municipalities, including Burbank, have instituted temporary moratoriums on new gun dealers to allow officials time to deliberate over more permanent solutions. Others, including Torrance, have restricted where dealers can open.

Even so, some of the boldest changes have limited effect and are going largely unnoticed, The Times has found in a months-long exploration of gun access in America that incorporated more than 100 interviews and volumes of public records. In Monterey Park, the shooter killed his victims with a semiautomatic handgun that is banned in California today but was legal when he purchased it more than two decades ago.

Researchers have begun to explore the influence of firearms dealers on nearby violence, and their findings are complicated. There’s little evidence that barring retailers from certain neighborhoods or requiring them to install video cameras, for example, can significantly drive down gun violence.

Only large-scale changes in the number of firearms dealers across multiple neighboring counties had a meaningful impact on local gun homicides, the researchers found.

“The average effect is actually quite small,” said David Johnson, associate professor of economics at the University of Central Missouri.

And yet new regulations keep coming.

Efforts to keep gun stores out of particular cities or neighborhoods are rooted in an assumption that more dealers equals more shootings. It’s a commonsense theory, given that most guns are sold by a licensed dealer before ending up on the streets and that people often purchase guns near their homes.

A report this year by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found that between 2017 and 2021, only about one-third of the guns traced by law enforcement after being used in crimes were recovered within 10 miles of the dealers that sold them.

Johnson’s 2021 study found that one additional dealer per 100 square miles in a county corresponds with a 2% increase in gun homicides in that county two years later. When the number of dealers in neighboring counties also rises at the same rate, the increase in gun homicides jumps to 4%.

The Times corroborated Johnson’s findings with a similar national analysis, using the ATF’s list of federal firearms licenses and mortality data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to estimate the effect of dealer density on gun homicides. One additional dealer per 100 square miles in a county and its neighboring counties corresponded to a 4.8% increase in the initial county’s homicides, according to the Times analysis.

The findings suggest that achieving a meaningful reduction in homicides in L.A. County would require more than 160 cities across Los Angeles, its four neighboring counties and their nearly 35,000 square miles to combine efforts to dramatically reduce the number of gun retailers in the region. Monterey Park — at about eight square miles — accounts for just one tiny piece of the puzzle.

“There needs to be some sort of cooperation across jurisdictions,” Johnson said.

Gun businesses, like localities, are not all the same. Some shops have firearms dealer licenses but only repair guns. Others sell just a few guns per year from residential garages or basements. Large retailers can move hundreds a week.

Turner’s Outdoorsman, for example, has more than 30 locations across California. The company’s Norwalk outpost sold more than 102,000 guns from 2010 to 2022, of which more than 1,400 — about 1.4% — were later recovered by law enforcement as what are known as crime guns, firearms possessed illegally or found after commission of a crime or suspected crime. The Bakersfield location sold about 6,000 firearms during the same period, of which 22 — about 0.4% — were crime guns.

Dealers also vary in their adherence to regulations, but comprehensive data on compliance do not exist.

Dan Semenza, director of interpersonal violence research at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center, found there were more shootings near dealers with serious violations of gun regulations than near those that complied with the rules. Examples of such violations include selling guns to people prohibited from owning them and failing to report multiple-firearm transactions to the ATF.

Between 2016 and 2018, homicides nearly doubled for each additional noncompliant dealer nearby, Semenza found using homicide data from Franklin County, Ohio, and limited ATF inspection data made public during a lawsuit.

“These stores, especially the bad ones, are contributing to the markets that are ultimately fueling a lot of illegal weapons,” he said.

In the wake of the Jan. 21 Monterey Park mass shooting, officials took bold steps to limit firearms in L.A. County’s unincorporated areas. On Feb. 7, the county Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a package of gun-related ordinances, including bans on sales of certain high-caliber guns and ammunition, and on carrying guns on county property. The board also approved measures directing staff and counsel to draft additional ordinances aimed at reining in gun dealers.

In October, the supervisors considered an ordinance mandating that gun stores have security cameras, maintain new sales and inventory reports, and deny entry to unaccompanied minors, among other requirements. No one showed up to make a public comment in person, and only one community member spoke remotely — about the role mental health problems play in gun violence. The board unanimously voted to approve the measure.

Last month, only five members of the public voiced their opinions remotely during a hearing on a county ordinance to establish a buffer zone barring new firearms dealers from opening within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, day-care centers, libraries and other gun stores. Again, the supervisors voted unanimously for the measure.

Had those regulations been in place in January, they would have done nothing to save the lives extinguished by Huu Can Tran, the gunman in the Monterey Park shooting.

Tran killed his victims with a modified Cobray model CM11-9 pistol, L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna said shortly after the massacre. The handgun, with its threaded barrel and ability to take a high-capacity magazine, falls under California’s assault weapons ban.

But the 72-year-old, who killed himself the day after the shooting, had legally purchased the firearm in February 1999 from a gun store in Monterey Park that has since closed, Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Nicole Nishida said in an email.

As cities across Southern California imposed restrictions on local firearms dealers, Jack Brandhorst came face-to-face with this new reality. Last year, he tried to relocate his small gun shop, Red Rifle Ltd., from a drab industrial park in Carson to Torrance’s downtown.

In September 2022, he spoke at a well-attended Torrance planning commission meeting. Two months earlier, the city had granted Brandhorst a permit to do business in the walkable shopping district. But after several residents filed formal appeals, the city was reconsidering Brandhorst’s plan.

There was no gun store buffer zone or moratorium on the books that would have barred Brandhorst from opening in Torrance. But he did need a special development permit if he wanted to be downtown.

For 15 minutes, the gun seller answered questions from planning commissioners about the safety protocols his store follows to help prevent gun violence. He described his vision of Red Rifle as “another boutique, elegant shop” integrated into the downtown community.

“Go get your biscuits and gravy from Clutch and Coffee, get that — mmm mmm mmm — chicken and waffles from Local Kitchen,” he said, naming two downtown Torrance eateries. “And then come by and pick you up a Glock and some bullets.”

The gun dealer’s desired location was next door to Local Kitchen and two doors down from a performing arts school. Dozens of stores, offices and residences are within a few blocks’ radius. There’s an elementary school about a mile away and a high school half a mile away.

Red Rifle sold 5,858 guns between 2010 and 2022, according to a June report by the state Department of Justice. Of those, 59, or just over 1%, were later recovered as crime guns in California.

Katherine Kaopua owns a cheerleading and tumbling center about a block from the century-old former salon where Red Rifle intended to move.

As one of the four residents who formally appealed the issuance of a special development permit for the gun dealer, she told the commission about a 1986 shooting she said demonstrated the risks of selling guns in downtown Torrance.

That April, a man stole a loaded gun from a since-closed sporting goods store near the proposed Red Rifle location. He went out onto the street and began firing at Torrance police officers who had responded to the scene, striking and killing 25-year-old Officer Thomas Keller.

Today, there’s a small memorial park named after Keller visible from the windows of the storefront Brandhorst was eyeing.

“A police officer shot in the line of duty because there was an active shooter that stole a gun and ammo from a local downtown Torrance store,” Kaopua told the planning commission.

In the end, the commission voted 5 to 2 to grant the appeal and deny Red Rifle its permit. After the hearing, Brandhorst vowed to appeal the decision to the full City Council.

Past midnight on Nov. 16, 2022, after hours of testimony and debate, the council voted 6 to 1 to uphold the appeal. Brandhorst would not be allowed to fulfill his dream of operating a gun store in downtown Torrance.

“These City Council people placated to the squeaky wheels,” he said afterward. “There’s no law or rule that limits gun stores in that area.”

Shortly after the November decision, Torrance’s council had city staff study downtown zoning regulations. In May, after reviewing the staff’s findings, the council approved a new restriction on where gun dealers can operate.

As of June, the regulation stated, a special development permit is no longer needed to open a business in downtown Torrance. But it also enumerated a list of business types that are no longer allowed downtown.

The list includes establishments such as drive-through restaurants, check-cashing shops — and gun stores.

Generations of racist economic policies and inequitable social structures correspond to higher rates of gun crime in certain areas, according to Jorja Leap, a professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and co-founder of the Watts Leadership Institute.

For example, neighboring Forsyth and Fulton counties in Georgia each had dozens more nearby dealers in 2019 than in 2009. While Fulton County’s homicide rate increased by 90%, Forsyth County’s declined by 30%. Home to Atlanta, Fulton County also has a much higher percentage of Black residents and residents in poverty than Forsyth County, and more than 25 times its homicide rate.

“People are poor. People don’t have resources. They don’t have mental health services,” Leap said. “A 12-year-old has lost a parent, or parents have walked out. He doesn’t go to therapy to deal with his feelings of anxiety and depression. He gets a gun.”

The Times analysis found that the relationship between dealer proximity and gun homicides is strongest in places with concentrated poverty, large Black populations and existing high homicide rates. In counties where more than a fifth of residents are in poverty, the 4.8% increase in homicides jumps to more than 7%.

Aqeela Sherrills, a former member of L.A.’s Grape Street Crips set, grew up in a family of gang members in Watts. Sherrills saw his best friend shot and killed in ninth grade and is a survivor of sexual violence. He knows what it feels like to want a gun for protection.

“Poverty and trauma underscore violence,” said Sherrills, who is now a prominent advocate for safer communities. “Just 2% of the population is responsible for 80% of the harm.”

Without social services, a fair justice system and community investment, he said, the cycle of poverty and violence continues and “small incidents turn into all-out war.”

Paul Carrillo says he “grew up in a pretty violent community in South L.A.” His father was a gang member, so he joined up when he was 14 years old. Over time he realized there was no future in that life.

Now, three decades later, Carrillo is vice president of the Giffords Center for Violence Intervention, where he pushes federal and state representatives to fund local support services.

“How accessible firearms are to Black and brown people who are willing to use them is a huge problem,” he said. But “just regulating guns in and of itself is not going to solve everything. … There’s still poverty, there’s still police violence, there’s still homelessness and all that. So it’s not one or the other. It’s both.”

The harsh reality, Carrillo said, is that guns are big business: “There’s definitely people who don’t give a crap that it’s Black and brown [people] killing each other while they’re making money.”

But Michael Eberhardt, the ATF’s former firearms operations division chief, said he thinks it’s possible to move the needle. He said he believes making guns more expensive, instituting waiting periods and even providing dealers with reports detailing crimes involving the guns they sold could make a difference.

“Gun dealers are mentally disconnected from violent gun crime. They just see it on the news,” he said. “They don’t correlate their own actions with violent gun crime. But we can change that.”