Monterey Park shooting rocks ‘most peaceful’ town amid lunar new year

Violence hits LA-area community, ending first in-person celebration since pandemic began

As the sun settled on Sunday evening, the only reminders of lunar new year revelry were a few houses adorned with bright red and gold paper lanterns. Inside the Hong Kong grocery store, just a five-minute walk from what the Los Angeles county sheriff described as perhaps “one of the most heinous cases” in the county’s history, an uptempo remix of Auld Lang Syne played to mark the holiday.

Nearly 12 hours earlier, 10 people were killed and at least 10 others hospitalized after a gunman opened fire in a ballroom dance studio in Monterey Park, a small majority-Asian American city near Los Angeles.