US authorities broke into a van on Sunday believed to be linked to the gunman who opened fire at a California dance studio on Saturday night, killing 10 people and wounding 10 others.
Shortly before 1:00 p.m. local time (9:00 p.m. in Lisbon), a special SWAT police team seized the vehicle, a white van, which was parked in a parking lot in Torrance, south of Los Angeles, just over 40 kilometers from Monterey Park, where the shooting occurred.
At least two bullet holes were visible in the driver’s side window just before the police squad approached, and the driver appeared to be slumped over the wheel, according to the newspaper.
The LA Times cites several police sources, according to which the man committed suicide with a firearm.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna has not confirmed whether the individual in the van is the suspected gunman in yesterday’s massacre.
“Could he be our suspect? Possibly,” he said, quoted by the LA Times. “But right now, if we’re doing our job right, we’re not just looking at that situation or scenario, we’re looking at all the possibilities,” he added.
Ten people were killed in the shooting that took place Saturday night in Monterey Park, a city near Los Angeles, according to police. The 10 dead are five women and five men, but have not yet been identified, according to the Los Angeles sheriff.
“At least 10 more victims were taken to the hospital,” according to Luna, who added that the condition of the injured “varies from stable to critical.”
The shooting took place around 10:00 p.m. local time (6:00 a.m. Sunday in Lisbon) in an area where hundreds of people had celebrated Chinese New Year hours earlier, and was perpetrated by a man armed with a machine gun, who downloaded several magazines of the gun, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Police described the main suspect as an Asian man between the ages of 30 and 50.
The city of Monterey Park, located about 13 kilometers east of Los Angeles, has about 60,000 residents and a large Asian population.
Source: TSF
