BURBANK — A judge has ordered the city of Monterey Park to produce five years of crime statistics to families who sued a dance ballroom where 11 people were killed in a 2023 mass shooting.
The tragic events of Jan. 21, 2023, occurred when gunman Huu Can Tran, 72, entered Star Ballroom Dance Studio and opened fire. Nine others were seriously wounded.
On Friday, Burbank Superior Court Judge Lee Arian granted the plaintiffs access to five years of criminal investigatory files and not the 20 years sought by the plaintiffs, which the city estimated would have required seven employees to spend 950 hours and cost nearly $45,000. Arian’s order excludes investigations of child and elder abuse.
The city is not a party in the case.
The plaintiffs’ subpoena sought from the city “any and all documents including any and all criminal reports you prepared for a 20-year period from Jan. 21, 2003 (through) Jan. 21, 2023, for any and all crimes within a one-mile radius from the Star Ballroom Dance Inc.”
The subpoena for past criminal reports is “highly relevant” to the families’ cause of action for negligence, according to the plaintiffs’ attorney’s court papers, which also say the data could show that the ballroom had notice of similar crimes and/or criminal activities prior to the mass shooting.
The plaintiffs include Alan Kao, the brother of the late Yu Lun Kao, who was 72 years old and unmarried and had no children when he was shot along with the others at the Star Ballroom. Alan Kao contends the ballroom was aware of prior violence there as well as in the immediate vicinity.
Siblings and co-plaintiffs Myna Quan and Don Nhan lost their sister, 65-year-old My My Nhan of Rosemead, who was found dead in her car in the ballroom parking lot. The families recently dropped Tran’s estate as a defendant.
After Tran left the Star Ballroom, he went to the Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio in Alhambra and attempted to enter before he was stopped by Brandon Tsay, a young man lauded as a lifesaving hero.
The gunman killed himself the next day after he was pulled over by police outside a Torrance strip mall.
The shooting was the deadliest in L.A. County history — and occurred on the eve of the Lunar New Year in a community that is majority Asian American and is considered the nation’s first suburban Chinatown.
Following the shooting, then-President Joe Biden visited Monterey Park, consoled each of the victims’ families and announced executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence.