His older sister, Brenda, who currently runs the business, said the video shows a long and violent confrontation between the two men in the lobby.
“He kept coming to him, he really wanted the gun back,” she said of the gunman.
The young Mr. Tsay, a computer operator who works at the ticket office several days a week at the ballroom that his grandfather founded, said that it was around 10:35 pm on Saturday that he was confronted by a gunman, whom he did not recognize. . He had never seen a real gun, but he could tell it was a deadly weapon, he said.
“My heart sank, I knew I was going to die,” he said.
The next time, he jumped and grabbed the weapon with his barrel and started fighting the gunman for control.
“At that time, it was normal,” he said. “Something happened there. I don’t know what happened to me.
They fought with gun control for about a minute and a half, and it seemed to be equal in strength, Mr. Tsay said. At one point, the gunner looked down at the weapon and removed one hand, as if he were using the gun to start firing. Mr. Tsay said he caught the moment and took the gun away from the man.
He pointed the weapon at her and shouted: “Go, get the hell out of here,” she recalled.
Mr Tsay, who spent the night assisting police in their investigation, said he was devastated and unable to process what he had experienced. He was deeply missed by the community of Monterey Park and the surrounding area where his family and their ballroom had been a beloved place for three decades, he said.
“Lai Lai,” the name her grandfather chose, means “come, come,” in Chinese, her sister said. The assailant, dressed in black, looked like he could be one of the regulars, he said.
“We have a very close-knit group of dancers,” he said. “It is very painful when this has happened, that one of our people would try to harm others.”
Shawn Hubler contributed reports.
