(Reuters) -Authorities on Monday identified the suspect in Sunday’s California church shooting as David Chou, 68, of Las Vegas, and booked him on one felony count of murder and five felony counts of attempted murder, the Orange County Sheriff’s office said.
The gunman opened fire in a Southern California church during a lunch banquet on Sunday, killing one person and wounding five, before churchgoers detained him and tied his legs with an electrical cord.
Four men of Asian descent aged 66 to 92 and an 86-year-old woman of Asian descent were injured at the Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, about 40 miles (64 km) southeast of Los Angeles, and taken to hospitals for treatment, the Orange County sheriff’s department said.
Authorities have not released the names of the person killed or five injured.
About 30 to 40 people were in the church when the shooting occurred. It was unclear what the suspect’s motive was, who he intended to target or whether it was a hate-related crime, police said. Two handguns were found at the scene.
It was at least the second mass shooting of the weekend in the United States, which has been plagued with gun violence in recent years. In Buffalo, New York, on Saturday, a white 18-year-old man opened fire at a supermarket in a mostly Black neighborhood, killing 10 and wounding three in what authorities described as a purely racist attack.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, additional reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
