Shortly after 10pm on Saturday, 65-year-old My Nhan and her dance partner that night, an elderly man, decided to end their Lunar New Year celebrations at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio a little early.
Mr. Nan was the driver and started backing up when he noticed a figure walking behind the car. She hit the brakes to allow the person to continue running. Within seconds, the exchange turned disastrous.
In a quiet parking lot, the man, later identified as a suspect by authorities, approached the driver’s window and shot Nan several times. Her Nhan, known as Mymy, was the first person to die in a rampage at a Monterey, Calif., park that killed 11 people.
After she was able to escape unharmed, her passengers continued to tell relatives, including her niece Fonda Quan, 32, of Ms. Nan’s horrifying final moments.
“Her scars were all on her left side,” Ms Quan said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “She may never have even met the person. All the bullets hit her aunt.”
Kuan joined many others on Monday in making the sad pilgrimage to the Los Angeles coroner’s office to identify loved ones and pick up personal items.
“And just looking at those items, I mean, it sure was difficult,” she said, holding back tears.
The coroner’s office will conduct an autopsy before Nyang’s body is handed over to relatives. After that, the bereaved family can begin the painstaking process of arranging the funeral.
The second youngest of six children, Nhan immigrated from Vietnam in the 1980s and settled in Rosemead, California, about five miles from Monterey Park. She had no children of her own, but she loved her nine nieces and her nephews like her own children.
Nyan is “really into fashion” and gravitates towards ballroom dancing, especially salsa and waltz, any activity she considers part of a healthy lifestyle.
Quan said Nan was also caring for his mother, who died just over a month ago. After weeks of grieving, she said: And unfortunately this happened. ”
The San Gabriel Valley is clustered with smaller cities like Monterey Park, many of them immigrants from Asia, and close ties have formed, especially among those in the ballroom dancing community, Kuan said. rice field. Although it’s close to Los Angeles, the city tends to feel like a small town.
Quan was home with her newborn on Saturday night when her mother called her at an unusually late hour. Someone in the ballroom called Ms. Quan’s mother and she said Ms. Nan had been shot. Quan said the news was so cryptic that for several minutes she and her mother suspected it was a prank.
When Mr. Quan rushed to the scene, police and paramedics were everywhere. “This is where we realize this could have been an actual incident,” she said.
In the interview, she couldn’t help but mention Ms. Nan in the present tense.
“One of the things I think she remembers best is how kind she was, how cheerful she was, how kind and friendly she was to everyone,” said Ms. Quan.
