Washington/Hyderabad: US President Joe Biden orders US flags lowered for California shooting victims on Sunday. The shooting had happened on late Saturday in the predominantly Asian American community of Monterey Park cast a shadow over the New Years festivities and sent a wave of fear through Asian American communities in the Los Angeles area.
Other cities sent extra officers to watch over the celebrations. Although the hunt for a gunman who killed 10 people at a ballroom dance club during Lunar New Year celebrations ended Sunday when authorities found him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the van he used to flee after people thwarted his attempt at a second shooting.
The massacre was the nation's 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. 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!
