More than 100 people gathered Monday night to pay their respects at a Monterey Park vigil that served as a sober contrast to the season’s usual Lunar New Year celebrations.
As investigators combed Southern California for anything to help explain the deadliest U.S. mass shooting in months, more than 100 mourners gathered Monday night at a vigil in Monterey Park that served as a sober contrast to the season’s usual Lunar New Year celebrations.
Gathering in the small public park in front of the civic center, they stood silently absorbed in the grief that had brought them together. Strangers now linked in sorrow, they sought solace and solidarity in one another’s company and in the tacit belief that the aftermath of tragedy should not be experienced alone.
Chuching Wang, president of the Taiwan Benevolent Assn. of California and co-organizer of the vigil, said the idea for the gathering came after speaking with friends who described their frustration that a time of joy and family during the Lunar New Year had been overshadowed by the shooting. He felt it was better to gather together as a community.
“It’s kind of like part of the coping process,” he said.
Those gathered came to pay their respects to the 11 killed and nine wounded in Saturday night’s shooting at a Monterey Park dance studio and to join the grieving in the attack’s aftermath.
“There’s something about being with others who feel just as sad as you do,” said Enrique Hernandez, who had arrived on a bicycle. “You don’t feel so alone.”
He gripped the handlebars of his bike. “That man must have been so full of hate to walk inside a business and just shoot people like that.
