A detective places evidence markers on Sunday, January 22, 2023 after a mass shooting at Star Dance. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
The man on the other end of the phone line sounded frantic.
“Yeah, I want to report,” the man said, gasping for air, “at the Monterey Park …”
“Yes?” the operator asked.
“Star Dance studio … somebody already reported?” the man said, his voice cracking.
“No, what’s going on, sir?” she asked.
“Somebody shooting a gun, shooting people, inside, inside the studio,” he said, in between breaths. “So, we just came out. …”
The caller described rushing out of the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park with other dancers the night of Jan. 21, minutes after a gunman had started his rampage.
His call sometime after 10:20 p.m. was one of the first that night to report the attack that left 11 people dead and nine others injured — the worst mass shooting in Los Angeles County history.
The audio of the 911 calls received that night, released by the city of Monterey Park on Thursday, Feb. 2, in response to a California Public Records Act request by the Southern California News Group and perhaps other media, illustrate the terrifying moments surrounding the massacre.
The shooter, 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, would later appear at the Lai Lai Ballroom in Alhambra, still armed with a semi-automatic pistol, authorities said. There, an employee of the ballroom disarmed the gunman, who fled.
Hours later, police in Torrance would catch up to Tran, who shot himself to death inside a van in a strip mall parking lot, authorities said.
Now that he’s dead, the gunman’s motive may never be known.
That night, the first shots fired were likely in the parking lot.
“Somebody shot the windows,” said a man on the phone with a police 911 dispatcher.
The dispatcher pressed for details.
“I don’t know what happened,” the man said in a trembling voice.
He was sitting in his car with his girlfriend in the ballroom parking lot when a gunman walked up to them, firing through the windows of his car.
The man said his girlfriend was now unconscious.
“We had the party inside,” he said. “We come out early and this guy come to shoot the windows. And the window has a hole. We’re inside the car. My girlfriend is unconscious right now.”
The Monterey Park police dispatcher put the man on hold to call the Fire Department.
“Hi, uh, this is the Monterey Park Police Department, uh, and we’re responding to a possible shooting and I have a male who said his girlfriend’s unconscious; I’m not sure what’s wrong with her,” the dispatcher told the Fire Department.
Taking over the call, the fire dispatcher asked where the man and his girlfriend were. The man in car said they were still there, worried the gunman might be lurking nearby.
The dispatcher asked if the man’s injured girlfriend could talk.
“Can you talk to me?” the man pleaded with her before returning to the dispatcher: “No, she cannot talk.”
The man can’t tell if she is breathing. He believed blood was coming from her head. Her begged for the police to come — the man and woman are in a gray Toyota with the lights on.
Moments later, the man frantically flagged down emergency responders.
“Come here, please. Help!” he can be heard speaking loudly on the 911 call. “Right here! Right here! Right here!”
That call matches what a family member of My My Nahn, a 65-year-old frequent dancer at the ballroom, said of her death.
Originally published at Josh Cain, Ruby Gonzales