A 26-year-old man is being lauded as a hero after disarming the Monterey Park gunman Huu Can Tran at a dance hall in Alhambra, California.
26-year-old Brandon Tsay wrestled a gun away from the Monterey Park shooter at a second location just minutes after the gunman killed at least 11 people and injured 9 more.
This man saved lives. Mr. Tsay is a hero.#MontereyPark #massshoting pic.twitter.com/DF6F1kapgV
— Ryan Pinesworth™️ (@RyanPinesworth) January 24, 2023
Surveillance footage shows Brandon Tsay giving his all to stopping Tran from killing or injuring more people on Saturday.
The 72-year-old shooter had already stormed a nearby dance hall in Monterey Park that evening. With 11 people dead and nine more victims wounded, he moved on to the Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio to find even more victims. Thanks to Tsay, more blood would not be spilled.
In an interview with Good Morning America, Tsay revealed that “the sound of a metal object clinking together” alerted him to the shooter who had just come into the ballroom. According to his statement, he had thought he was going to die when he turned around and saw “an Asian man holding a gun.”
Tsay further revealed that the shooter did not seem like someone who was looking to rob but was instead looking around for targets to harm. As the hero watched the shooter fix his weapon, he immediately felt the need to disarm the older man — so he sprung into action.
Surveillance footage obtained by NBC News shows him wrestling with the shooter and struggling to gain control of the weapon.
Putting context to the visualized struggle, Tsay said, “He was hitting me across the face, especially in the back of my head. I was trying to use my elbows to separate the gun away from him, create some distance.”
Tsay did manage to gain possession of the gun and in furtherance of what he called “primal instinct,” he pointed the weapon at the gunman. But he did not pull the trigger.
“I thought he would run away but he was just standing there contemplating whether to fight or to run away. I really thought I would have to shoot him,” he said.
The shooter then turned and walked out the door to his van. He would later shoot himself to death as police surrounded him.
After such a bold move, Tsay now has a new outlook on courage. For him, courage is “
not the absence of fear, but the ability to have adversity to fear when fearful events happen.”
