President Joe Biden praised 26-year-old Brandon Tsay, of San Marino, as an American hero on Tuesday night, Feb. 7, during his State of the Union speech, in which he hailed the Alhambra dance studio operator’s action to thwart a gunman’s Jan. 21 rampage as a symbol of sacrifice while condemning the gun violence that led to 11 dead in a Monterey Park dance hall.
“He thought he was going to die, but then he thought about the people inside,” Biden said. “He saved lives. It’s time we do the same as well. Ban assault weapons now. Ban them now — once and for all.”
Tsay was helping to run the Lai Lai Ballroom and Studio in Alhambra on the night of Jan. 21 when a man walked in carrying a MAC-11 semi-automatic pistol. Tsay stopped him, wrestled the gun away from him and kicked out the man, who had only minutes earlier opened fire inside of Monterey Park’s Star Ballroom Dance Studio. It turned a weekend of Lunar New Year celebration and a night of dancing into yet another massacre in America.
Ultimately, Tsay would be credited with preventing a second attack at the Alhambra dance studio.
At the mention of his name by Biden, Tsay stood to wave and nod to a chorus of applause from a standing joint session of Congress, including the president’s cabinet and the U.S. Supreme Court. He sat in the First Lady Jill Biden’s viewing box along with other esteemed guests.
On his right were the parents of Tyre Nichols, a Black man who died last month after a brutal beating by police in Memphis, Tenn. And on his left was the band U2’s lead singer Bono, known for his humanitarian work in the fight against HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty.
Other guests, among others, joining Tsay in the box included Lynette Bonar, of the Navajo Nation, who initiated the first cancer center opened on a Native American reservation, LGBTQIA+ activists Gina and Heidi Nortonsmith and others whose stories weave into a tapestry of American tenacity and progression.
Tsay was not the only…
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