Lost in the aftermath of the Monterey Park, California, ballroom dance hall shooting that left 11 people dead is an alarming fact: It took five hours for authorities to alert the public that the gunman was on the loose Saturday night.
Even after the 72-year-old shooter brought a submachine gun-style weapon into another nearby dance hall about a half-hour later, a potential attack thwarted by a hero who grabbed the weapon and chased the man away, it would be hours more before police held a news conference to announce the suspect was still at large.
“What took so long?” said Higgins, an adjunct professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Maybe they were still doing their investigation. Maybe they didn’t have a good handle on what they had. But if they didn’t know, they should have erred on the side of caution and put this out.”
Authorities said the first call about the shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio came in Saturday at 10:22 p.m. local time and officers responded within three minutes. Monterey Park police said it took several minutes for officers — several of whom were rookies on the force — to assess the chaotic scene and look for the gunman, who had already fled.
The Associated Press began telephoning the Monterey Park police and fire departments and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department shortly before the RMG News alert, and kept calling for nearly three hours. Monterey Park police never responded. A sheriff’s official confirmed to the AP there were nine dead shortly before 2:36 a.m. Sunday, when the AP published an alert.
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