Young programmer credited with disarming 72-year-old suspect in mass shooting during Asian Lunar New Year celebrations in California tells how his fight went "instinctive" with the gunman.
The man, identified by The New York Times as Brandon Tsay, 26, was at the Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio in Alhambra, in the western United States, on Saturday night watching the dancers when he looked up. and saw the suspect pointing a gun at him.
"My heart sank, I knew I was going to die"he told the newspaper. "That moment, it was instinctive. Something happened there. I do not know what happened to me"narrowed.
As he recounted, he lunged at the man and grabbed the barrel of the gun, starting a fight for his life.
Tsay, whose grandparents founded the dance hall where she was staying, was unaware that the suspect, identified by police as Huu Can Tran, would have killed 10 people and wounded others 10 minutes earlier in a similar room near Monterey Park.
He said that he had never seen a gun in real life, but it was clear that the gunman was not there to rob the place but to kill.
"By his body language, his facial expression, his eyes, he was looking for people"Tsay told the Times.
Tsay and her family said security footage showed the two struggling for about 90 seconds before the gun was taken from the suspect.
He immediately pointed at her and yelled: "go away, get out of here"he pointed.
Thus, the suspect fled. Hours later he was dead, shooting himself inside a white pickup truck in Torrance, several miles to the south, on Sunday afternoon as police were preparing to arrest him.
Five men and five women, all in their 50s and 60s, had been killed by the gunman in Monterey Park on Saturday night.
Police said the motive for the attack, which occurred as Asian communities around the world celebrated the Lunar New Year holiday, remained a mystery.
They estimate that the gunman had the intention of carrying out a similar massacre in Alhambra and stressed that those who disarmed him saved lives.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said two people disarmed the suspect at Alhambra, but Tsay and his family, who run the ballroom, said video shows he alone wrestled with the killer.