MONTEREY PARK, California: Authorities searched for a motive for the gunman who killed 10 people at a Los Angelesarea ballroom dance club during Lunar New Year celebrations, sending a wave of fear through Asian American communities in the region and casting a shadow over festivities nationwide.

The suspect was found on Sunday, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a van in which AUTHORITIES SAY HE flED AFTER PEOPLE thwarted his attempt at a second shooting on Saturday night.

The massacre was the UnitED STATES’ fiFTH MASS KILLING THIS month. It was also the deadliest attack since May 24, when 21 people were killed in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

Los Angeles County Sheriff ROBERT LUNA IDENTIfiED THE MAN as 72-year-old Huu Can Tran and said no other suspects were at large. He said the motive remained unclear for the attack, which also wounded 10 people, seven of whom were still hospitalized.

At a Sunday evening news conference, the sheriff told reporters he didn’t have their exact ages, but that all of the people killed appeared to be over 50.

The suspect was carrying what Luna described as a semiautomatic pistol with an extended magazine, and a second handgun was discovered in the van where Tran died.

Monterey Park Police Chief Scott Wiese said on Sunday night that within three minutes of receiving the call, officers arrived at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park. There, they found carnage inside and people trying to flee through all the doors.

“When they came into the parking lot, it was chaos,” Wiese said.

About 20 to 30 minutes after the first attack, the gunman entered the Lai Lai Ballroom in the nearby city of Alhambra. But people wrested the weapon away from him and witnesses said he fled in a white van.

The van was found in Torrance, another community home to many Asian Americans, about 22 miles (34.5 kilometers) from that second location.

After surrounding the vehicle for HOURS, law enforcement officials swarmed and entered it. A person’s body appeared to be slumped over the wheel and was later removed. Members of a SWAT team looked through the van’s contents before walking away.

The sheriff’s department earlier released photos of an Asian man believed to be the suspect, apparently taken from a security camera.

Community in fear

Rep. Judy Chu said she still has questions about the attack, but hopes residents now feel safe.

“The community was in fear thinking that they should not go to any events because there was an active shooter,” Chu told Sunday’s news conference.

“What was the motive for this shooter?” she said. “Did he have a mental illness? Was he a domestic violence abuser? How did he gets these guns and was it through legal means or not?”

Monterey Park is a city of about 60,000 people on the eastern edge of Los Angeles and is composed mostly of Asian immigrants from China or first-generation Asian Americans. The shooting happened in the heart of its downtown where red lanterns decorated the streets for the Lunar New Year festivities. A police car was parked near a large banner that proclaimed “Happy Year of the Rabbit!”

The celebration in Monterey Park is one of California’s largest. Two days of festivities, which have been attended by as many as 100,000 people in past years, were planned. But officials canceled Sunday’s events following the shooting.

An Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the US shows that 2022 was one of the nation’s worst years with 42 such attacks — the second-highest number since the creation of the tracker in 2006. The database defines a mass killing as four people killed, not including the perpetrator.

The Star Dance Studio is a few blocks from city hall on Monterey Park’s main thoroughfare, Garvey Avenue, which is dotted with strip malls with signs are in both English and Chinese. The business offered dance lessons from tango to rumba to the fox trot, and rented its space for events. On Saturday, its website said, it was hosting an event called “Star Night” from 8 to 11:30 p.m.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited Monterey Park on Sunday, meeting with victims and their families, as well as loCAL OFfiCIALS.

Both President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have been briefed on the situation, aides said. The president HAS ORDERED ALL US flAGS AT PUBLIC BUILDINGS TO BE flOWN AT HALF-STAFF until sunset on Thursday to honor the victims, according to a White House statement.