A candlelight vigil was held at the University of Southern California’s Religious Center on Wednesday to remember the victims who were brutally killed the past weekend in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay.
Eleven victims were killed inside a Monterey Park dance studio on Saturday and seven others were killed on a farm at Half Moon Bay on Monday. Students, faculty, and alumni gathered to mourn yet another mass shooting attack.
The Monterey Park incident is Los Angeles County’s deadliest case of mass shooting in its history. These devastating attacks leave the communities of Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay shattered and in mourning.
Katherine Chan Guevara, Monterey Park native and program specialist at Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, shared her experience mourning the incident over the last few days.
“I am a mother who is raising my child in Monterey Park,” she said. “I am a Monterey Park native. It hurts my heart to see such a welcoming and diverse community devastated by the tragedy that unfolded last weekend.”
“In the recent period we’ve been called to protect our elders … now 11 of our elders are dead and nine more are hospitalized,” she said.
These attacks are especially devastating due to the timing right before the Lunar New Year celebration, traditionally a time of reunion and family gatherings. Monterey Park is historically known as a tight-knit community for Asian American immigrants, so this attack is disheartening towards the victims and their families.
Happening within 72 hours of the Monterey Park shooting, another shooting occurred on a farm in Half Moon Bay in Northern California, killing seven people as a result.
With the tragedies that unfolded last week, these incidents revive discussion for the increased regulation of gun control laws in the United States. Of the 58 mass shootings in the US that happened this past month, seven of them occurred in California. These shootings further reveal that mass shootings are happening across the country at an alarming rate, and revive discussion on tighter gun reform laws in the United States.
Guevara expresses her hope to overcome this tragedy as a community.
“My neighbors and I refuse this tragedy to define us … Monterey Park is a place of comfort, peace and, most importantly, community.”