Brandon Tsay, hero who disarmed Monterey Park shooter, honored

The City of Alhambra honored Brandon Tsay, the hero who disarmed the Monterey Park shooting suspect, at a ceremony this past Sunday. Tsay, 26, was awarded a medal of courage from the Alhambra Police Department.

The White House also announced that President Joe Biden has invited Tsay to be his guest at the State of the Union Address on February 7.

In a surveillance video, Tsay is seen struggling to take a weapon away from the deceased suspect, Huu Can Tran, in the lobby of his family’s dance studio, the Lai Lai Ballroom, in Alhambra eventually gaining control of the gun causing Tran to flee.

In an interview with ABC News anchor Robin Roberts in an interview last Monday on “Good Morning America,” Tsay told Roberts that the gunman was “looking around the room” as if he was “looking for targets — people to harm.”

“That’s when I turned around and saw that there was an Asian man holding a gun. My first thought was I was going to die here, this is it.”

“He started prepping the weapon and something came over me,” Tsay said. “I realized I needed to get the weapon away from him. I needed to take this weapon, disarm him or else everybody would have died.”

“When I got the courage, I lunged at him with both my hands, grabbed the weapon and we had a struggle,” he added. “We struggled into the lobby, trying to get this gun away from each other. He was hitting me across the face, bashing the back of my head.”

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Robbery-Homicide division is piecing together the facts as to why Tran killed 11 people and wounded nearly a dozen others others in the mass shooting at the Star Ballroom in Monterey Park before traveling to the Lai Lai Ballroom.

“The carnage would have been so much worse had it not been for Brandon Tsay,” California U.S. House Representative Judy Chu whose District includes Monterey Park said Sunday during the ceremony.

Rep. Chu also presented Tsay with a certificate of congressional recognition, calling his story “was so amazing” that she noted she had asked him to be her guest at the State of the Union address on Feb. 7. According to the congresswoman though, barely an hour after her request to him, the President called Tsay to personally invite him to be his guest.

According to the White House, the president in the call told Tsay: “I wanted to call to see how you’re doing and thank you for taking such incredible action in the face of danger. I don’t think you understand just how much you’ve done for so many people who are never going to even know you. But I want them to know more about you.

“You have my respect,” Biden added. “You are America, pal. You are who we are — no, no, you are who we are. America’s never backed down, we’ve always stepped up, because of people like you.”

BRODY LEVESQUE