The scene.Photo: Eric Thayer/Getty
A survivor ofSaturday night’s mass shooting in Monterey Park, Calif., whose longtime friend and dancing partner was killed, tells PEOPLE the violence has left her shaken to her core.
In an interview, a woman who identified herself only as Shally due to privacy concerns, says her “head is spinning” after theattack at the Star Dance Studio— and she’s in shock that she’ll never see her friend, whom she described as a “good guy,” again.
Shally, 57, told PEOPLE she arrived at the venue around 8 p.m. on Saturday. About 50 to 60 people were there, she said, and she was excited to celebrate the Lunar New Year with her community. But her enthusiasm turned to horror when she heard cracking gunfire — “boom, boom, boom” — and then “everybody panicked,” she said.
“I was standing with my dancing partner, my friend,” Shally recalls. “We were in the middle of dancing. Then came another sound: ‘Boom boom boom boom,’ it was different and faster. That time I told my partner, ‘We have to go hide.'”
The two hid under a table, holding hands and staying quiet to avoid detection, she says. “I tell my partner, ‘Don’t say anything,’ and I see the guy ready to do something, and we lay down and we hold together and he shoots everywhere,” she recalled.
Tragically, Shally’s partner, with whom she’d been dancing for 15 years, was fatally shot in the back. She realized he’d been hit when she found her hand covered in blood after touching him.
After calling 911, she glanced around the room and saw many other victims strewn around her on the floor. One woman was bleeding, she recalls. “I see they just lay down straight, and I see so many [lying] down.”
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Officials said five women and five men were killed in the Star Dance Studio shooting around 10:20 pm Saturday.
The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office has named two of the victims: My Nhan, a 65-year-old woman, and Lilan Li, a 63-year-old woman. The other victims have been identified but are not being publicly named pending next of kin.
Nine of the 10 victims were in their 60s and 70s, and one was in her 50s, according to officials.
The assailant, a 72-year-old man,was found dead Sundayabout 30 miles away from the scene, in Torrance. He fatally shot himself after authorities used armored vehicles to locate the white van he’d been driving.
Monterey Park, where the fatal spree occurred, has a population of about 60,000 people, 65% of whom are Asian,according to the 2020 census.
The New York Timesreports that in the 1990s, the city claimed to be the first city in the continental United States where the majority of residents were of Asian descent.
source: people.com
