10 dead in shooting after Los Angeles-area Lunar New Year celebration

At least 10 people died in a mass shooting following a Lunar New Year festival in a city east of Los Angeles, according to authorities.

The shooting in Monterey Park, Calif., occurred at a dance club and was reported around 10:22 p.m., the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said, after a Lunar New Year festival that was scheduled to end at 9 p.m. Police initially provided scant details on the suspect, but revealed at a press conference on Sunday morning that investigators’ preliminary belief is that the suspect is an Asian male. The suspect is still at large.

“Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Homicide detectives are responding to assist Monterey Park Police Department with a shooting death investigation,” the department first said in a short statement Sunday morning. “There are nine deceased. There is no additional information available at this time.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Capt. Andrew Meyer later updated the number of people killed and said that while the motive was unknown, police were investigating whether the shooting could have been racially motivated.

“We will look at every angle as far as whether it was a hate crime or not,” he told reporters at a press conference.

Meyer also said 10 other people were injured in the shooting. Their conditions ranged from stable to critical, he added.

Police also said that they were aware of another incident that had been reported in Alhambra, a town that neighbors Monterey Park, and that they were investigating whether it was related to the mass shooting in Monterey Park.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at the press conference later Sunday that police were getting different descriptions of the suspect from different witnesses, emphasizing that their belief that the suspect is an Asian male is preliminary.

Luna reiterated that police were open to any possibility, including the chance that the shooting was a hate crime, in their investigation.

“There actually is a lot more that we don’t know than what we know at this time,” Luna said.

Monterey Park is about 10 miles from downtown Los Angeles. It is a city of about 60,000 people with a large Asian population.

The Lunar New Year events in the city have drawn hundreds of thousands of visitors in the past years, according to the city’s website.

Sunday’s Lunar New Year events have been canceled in the city.

It is the fifth mass shooting this year, according to The Associated Press and USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S.

–Updated at 12:57 p.m.