On the eve of Lunar New Year on Jan. 21, Lloyd Gock was 10 feet away as a gunman entered the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park.
The sound of 42 gunshots rang in his ears as he saw friends fall around him.
The shooter wielded a modified semi-automatic weapon, and the attack left 11 dead and nine injured.
Today, Gock works to help his community recover, but those memories are still fresh. He attributes his survival to both his dance partner and an acquaintance visiting the studio for the first time.
“When the shooting started happening, we were all stuck on the floor and this guy next to me used a table next to him to break up the bullets, and of course, the people in front of us got killed,” he recalls. “I was in the middle, and on the other side, it’s my dance partner, and she used a coat to put over my head and just kept saying ‘calm down, don’t make any noise.’ She keeps saying even today that she was my angel, and I really do think that.”
One day later, police surrounded a white van in Torrance, where they found the shooter, identified as 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The harrowing incident left the entire community shaken. As local residents mourned the tragedy, conversations on gun violence and mental health once again arose among lawmakers.
And as Monterey Park marked six months after the shooting this week, Gock has forged a new path in life, working to heal the scars of trauma, both his own and for others.
“The initial shock is gone now,” said Gock. “I’m not as fearful about the dark or nightmares about things like that. They don’t happen anymore, but occasionally, if I see a movie with a gunshot, I still kind of think back to the day when this thing happened.”
However, the immediate aftershocks of the shooting devastated Gock’s mental health, finding their way into his day-to-day life.
Gock’s day job is in buying and selling fashion, but the shooting disrupted his…
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