Beginning with a mass shooting on Sun., Jan. 22 in Monterey Park east of Los Angeles, a 72-year-old-Asian-American gunman opened fire inside a dance studio, killing 11 and wounding 10 others.
At a second dance studio in Monterey Park where another Lunar New Year celebration was being held, the gunman entered with his rifle, but Brandon Tsay, a 26-year-old Asian-American standing in the lobby, wrestled the firearm away from the shooter before he could open fire.
Police were able to track the gunman to Torrence, a city south of Los Angeles, where the shooter committed suicide with his firearm after being surrounded by the police.
The next day some 400 miles north of Monterey Park at Half Moon Bay, a 67-year-old-Asian-American, opened fire at two locations, leaving seven dead and one injured.
Chunli Zhao was apprehended by police at a sheriff’s substation south of San Francisco not far from the mushroom farm and the trucking firm in the coastal area where the killings took place.
Less than 24 hours later in Oakland where a bus was returning from San Francisco, a third shooting in as many days left one dead and seven others wounded at a Valero gas station. Unlike the other two mass shootings, several shooters were involved, and those engaged in the shootings were still at large at press time.
Ironically, the three shootings left the same number dead as did the atmospheric river that spread record amounts of snow and rain on Calif. in late Dec. and early Jan., causing flooding up and down the Golden State that left 19 dead and $31 billion in property damage.
FBI statistics show that in 2021 there were 61 active shooters in the U.S. who claimed the lives of 103 victims while wounding 140 more.
According to the Rockefeller Institute of Government, in the U.S. the average age of a mass shooter is 33.2 years-of-age. The average age of the two mass shooters in Calif., one dead and one in custody, is 69.5.
