10 killed in Lunar New Year shooting

The "Year of the Rabbit" began in horror for the inhabitants of Monterey Park, the largely Asian American suburb of Los Angeles where a mass shooting left 10 people dead.

In this city of 60,000 people, red lanterns and banners in Chinese characters celebrating the Lunar New Year still fluttered over a roadway.

A gunman entered the ballroom and killed five men and five women, and wounded at least 10 others, authorities said.

The mass killing -- the deadliest US shooting since the Uvalde massacre, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed in an elementary school in Texas -- took Monterey Park by surprise.

Just a few miles east of downtown Los Angeles, Monterey Park is considered the city's "new Chinatown."

The man wanted for a mass shooting in California during Lunar New Year is dead, apparently from suicide, police in Los Angeles said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said police had tracked a wanted van and when officers approached, they heard a gunshot from within the van.

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 22 people at an elementary school last May.

More than 44,000 people died from gunshot wounds in 2022 across the United States, more than half of which were suicides.