Monterey Park shooter, age 72, is the oldest in the mass shooter database [View all]

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The deadly shooting was as horrifying as it was rare.

“This is definitely unique,” said James Densley, president and co-founder of the Violence Project, a nonprofit organization that tracks mass shootings, which the group defines as those involving four or more people killed in a public space.

By that definition, 72-year-old Hemet resident Huu Can Tran — the man identified by authorities as the shooter — would be the oldest person in recent history to carry out a mass shooting, and only the second in their 70s to carry out such an attack, according to the Violence Project. The organization’s database dates back to 1966.


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According to mass shooting data compiled by both organizations, the average age of attackers is 33, making Tran more than twice as old of the vast majority of mass shooters.

The Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium uses a different definition for a mass shooting, which includes multiple victims who have been injured or killed during a shooting at a public location. Yet even under that definition, Tran would be among the oldest of perpetrators.

Of 402 incidents studied by the group between 1966 and 2020, only six of the perpetrators were older than 70 years old, Schildkraut said.

In 2009, an 88-year-old opened fire at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., killing one police officer and injuring two others. In 1981, a 70-year-old killed five people in a shooting in Allen, Ky.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-01-23/monterey-park-suspect-is-oldest-known-mass-shooter-in-u-s