LOS ANGELES — A gunman had fired his first deadly shots outside a dance hall when Monterey Park police got a call for help from a person attempting to make sense of what happened to his partner sitting within the automobile next to him.
“Is your girlfriend awake?” the dispatcher asked.
“I’m unsure,” the caller said.
Audio from the 911 recordings released Thursday provides a way of the confusion and chaos that unfolded Jan. 21 on the Star Ballroom Dance Studio on an evening that had been stuffed with celebration for the Lunar Recent 12 months.
Police said Huu Can Tran, 72, a onetime fixture on the ballroom who told people he was a dance instructor, killed 11 people and wounded nine with a submachine gun-style semiautomatic handgun. Of the six women and five men killed, one woman was in her 50s and the remainder were of their 60s and 70s.
Tran fled from the shooting in a white van and about 20 minutes later entered a dance hall in nearby Alhambra, where a quick-thinking worker lunged for the weapon and disarmed him after a brief struggle. Tran killed himself the following morning as police surrounded his van.
In the middle of just over three minutes, Monterey Park police dispatchers fielded three 911 calls. One got here from a person who had run from the club after seeing the gunman open fire near the dance hall entrance. He initially mistook the gunshots for firecrackers.
That man, who said he saw the gunman reloading the weapon as people ran for safety, urged a dispatcher to “send police here immediately.”
“He might start shooting again,” the person said in a panicked voice.
The dispatcher asked several times if anyone was hurt. The person said he didn’t know.
“It happened too fast,” he said. “Everybody ran away.”
The person who phoned from the automobile reported that he and his girlfriend left the party early and someone tried to interrupt a automobile window as they were leaving. He then said the window had been shot out and his girlfriend was unconscious.
He didn’t discover the lady, but Mymy Nhan, 65, was identified because the only person shot within the parking zone.
A hearth dispatcher pressed for details, asking if the wounded woman could speak.
“My, are you able to confer with me?” the caller pleaded. “No, she cannot talk.”
The dispatcher then asked if she was respiration.
“Oh, no,” the person said. “Perhaps she die. I’m unsure.”
He then reported she was bleeding from the top. The dispatcher assured him police and paramedics were on their way.
Five minutes into the decision, a police dispatcher, who had remained on the road after connecting the caller with the fireplace department, asked what type of automobile the person was in and told him to wave down officers for help.
“Come here, please. Help!” the person might be heard yelling. “Right here! Right here! Right here!”
The police dispatcher then notified his peer in the fireplace department there are “several gunshot victims inside.”
“Contained in the same automobile?” the fireplace dispatcher asked.
The police dispatcher clarified that he meant the business — the dance hall.
After this exchange, some seven minutes into the decision, the person could still be heard calling for help.
The police dispatcher told him to maintain waving. Eventually, he said, “They’re here. they’re here.”
Nhan, an immigrant from Vietnam who was an everyday on the club and loved to bop, was certainly one of the primary victims named after the massacre.
Three weeks earlier, she had lost her mother, whom she had cared for, her niece, Fonda Quan, told The Associated Press. She had gone to the club to rejoice with friends and was able to “start the 12 months fresh.”
