Vice President Kamala Harris visits Monterey Park; meets with victims’ families
Vice President Kamala Harris, on Wednesday visited the scene of the worst mass shooting in Los Angeles County’s history to meet with the families of 11 people killed and another nine injured in Monterey Park.
Harris placed flowers — a large bouquet made up of white roses, yellow lilies, and palm fronds wrapped in white — on a memorial at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, where the deadly attack took place late Saturday.
Harris arrived in her motorcade at the Monterey Park memorial after 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Onlookers called out to her from the east side of Garvey as she exited her vehicle.
Carrying a bouquet of white flowers, the vice president walked to where wreaths with photos of seven victims were arranged in a row near the ballroom’s front entrance.
She paused in front of each wreath, then walked back to where hundreds had left flowers and candles over the last two days, leaving her own.
In brief remarks to a gaggle of press, Harris said the White House would be renewing a push for gun control.
“Tragically, we keep saying the same thing,” she said during brief remarks.
“I have had the unfortunate experience of visiting many of these sites,” she said, “sometimes within days of the massacre like this.”
She added: “We will always be a compassionate nation, mourn the loss … but we must also require that leaders in our nation will have the ability and the power and the responsibility to do something,” she added.
As she started to walk away, a reporter asked her whether she thought something would change after this shooting, the latest tragedy illustrating the uniquely American scourge of mass gun violence.
Turning around with her arms outstretched, she called on lawmakers to pass new legislation to keep Americans safe from guns.
“Can they do something? Yes. Should they do something? Yes,” Harris said. “Will they do something? That’s why we must speak up.”
One mourner, Priscilla Wong, was among the first to lay down a bouquet of flowers after the vice president’s caravan left the scene.
Falling to her knees, Wong wept, as reporters and cameras encircled her. Speaking in short sentences disrupted by her own screams, Wong said she knew many of the Monterey Park victims, including Diana Tom — a beloved dance instructor at Star Dance. “We danced together for 10 years over,” Wong said.
On Wednesday, Harris touched down at LAX just after 4:15 p.m. and was promptly greeted on the tarmac by L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis, Sheriff Robert Luna, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, Mayor Henry Lo and Mayor Pro Tem Jose Sanchez from Monterey Park and state Attorney General Rob Bonta.
Harris met privately, behind closed doors, with family members and first responders at the Langley Senior Center — which has served as a counseling and support center for victims’ families this week — and was also scheduled to meet with public officials, including Sheriff Luna.
The vice president’s visit coincided with a vigil outside the dance center, the fourth such gathering in three days in the heartbroken city that only a few days ago was in the midst of its Lunar New Year celebration.
COMPLETE COVERAGE: Monterey Park mass shooting
Harris’ home state endured an eruption of shootings this week. On the heels of the dance hall attack, a shooting in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, left seven people dead and one critically wounded on Monday. Later that day, a shootout at an Oakland gas station killed one and wounded seven.
Earlier this week, in comments made during her trip to Florida on Sunday, Harris declared that “this violence must stop.”
“A time of a cultural celebration … and yet another community has been torn apart by senseless gun violence,” Harris said, noting that the massacre took place during Lunar New Year celebrations in the area.
Harris spoke to a crowd in Tallahassee, Florida, before she began her speech to mark the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which the current iteration of the high court overturned in June, ending federal protections for abortion rights. California voters, however, in November decided to add abortion rights to protections in the state constitution.
For still shaken Monterey Park, the mass shooting remains something of a mystery. A motive for the 72-year-old gunman’s rampage has not been determined.
Before the vice president’s arrival, the public memorials to the victims continued to grow — flowers and candles, burning incense and fruit, small items left by each person who came, whether they knew the victims personally or not.
Outside the Star Ballroom, mourners, alone or in small groups, came to pay their respects.
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