"I'm very proud of him. If the situation had been any different. I think - that night was a tragedy, it could have been much worse if [the gunman wasn't disarmed]," Tom Tsay tells Inside Edition's Jim Moret.
The young man who disarmed a gunman before he could carry out a second mass shooting in California is being hailed as a hero by his father.
"I'm very proud of him. If the situation had been any different. I think - that night was a tragedy, it could have been much worse if [the gunman wasn't disarmed]," Tom Tsay tells Inside Edition's Jim Moret.
Tom is the owner of the second ballroom that the alleged gunman targeted on Saturday night, after opening fire at the Star Ballroom Dance Theater during the Lunar New Year celebration.
After that shooting — which left 11 dead and 9 injured — suspected gunman Huu Can Tran moved on to a second ballroom nearby.
That is when he encountered Brandon Tsay, who managed to wrestle a semiautomatic weapon out of the gunman's hands.
Not only did that prevent the gunman from unleashing further carnage, it also allowed law enforcement to trace the weapon back to its owner.
By the time a S.W.A.T. team had located Tran's van, he had already taken his own life.
His motive remains unclear at this time.
“I think we all want to find out why,” Chief Scott Wiese of the Monterey Park Police said in a news briefing on Monday. “The why is a big part of this. The problem is, we may never know the why.”
Brandon meanwhile is being praised for his bravery.
“That young man is a hero,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis.
