Deadly California shooting casts pall over Canadian Lunar New Year festivities
CTV
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his 'heart breaks' for the people whose Lunar New Year celebrations were 'violently attacked' and whose lives were forever changed after a mass shooting in California.
The joy of Lunar New Year parades, parties and other festivities was tempered with sadness on Sunday following a deadly mass shooting in California that appeared to target people celebrating the same occasion.
Though in-person celebrations resumed in much of Canada for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shadow of the shooting in Monterey Park, Calif., loomed over some of the proceedings.
A gunman killed 10 people and wounded 10 others at a ballroom dance studio in the city on the eastern edge of Los Angeles composed mostly of Asian immigrants from China or first-generation Asian Americans.
Authorities later found the suspect, who Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna identified as 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the van he'd used to flee after people thwarted his attempt at a second shooting.
Luna said no other suspects were at large and the motive for the attack remained unclear.
The attack followed a Lunar New Year celebration Saturday night in the heart of the city's downtown core, where red lanterns decorated the streets for the Lunar New Year festivities.
While some attending Canada's largest Lunar New Year parade in Vancouver's Chinatown had yet to hear the news out of California, Grace Chen said she and her family had the victims on their minds.
