California shooting leaves 3 dead, 4 injured in upscale Los Angeles neighborhood

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Three people were killed and four others injured in a shooting at a multimillion-dollar short-term rental home in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood early Saturday, police said.

The shooting happened around 2:30 a.m. in the Beverly Crest neighborhood. This is at least the sixth mass shooting in California this month.

sergeant. Frank Preciado of the Los Angeles Police Department said earlier Saturday that the three people killed were inside a vehicle.

READ MORE: Gunman kills 10 near Los Angeles after Lunar New Year festival

Two of the four victims were taken in private vehicles to area hospitals and two others were transported by ambulance, said police spokesman Sgt. said Bruce Borihanh. Two were in critical condition and two were in stable condition, Borihanh said. The age and gender of the victims were not immediately released.

Investigators were trying to determine if there was a party at the rental house or what type of gathering was taking place, Borihanh said.

Borihanh said the police had no information on the suspects. After the shooting ended, the block was severed as investigators searched for evidence.

The mid-century home is in Beverly Crest, a quiet neighborhood nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains where homes are big and expensive. The property, estimated at $3 million, is located in a cul-de-sac and described on online real estate platforms as modern and private with a swimming pool and outdoor shower.

LAPD Officer Jader Chaves said the department doesn’t know if the house has a history of noise or other complaints related to the party.

Saturday morning’s shooting comes on top of a massacre at a dance hall in suburban Los Angeles last week that left 11 dead and nine injured and shootings at two farms in Half Moon Bay that left seven dead and a casualty.

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Last Saturday, 72-year-old Huu Can Tran gunned down patrons at a dance hall in the predominantly Asian Monterey Park, where tens of thousands of people attended Lunar New Year festivities earlier in the evening. He went to another dance hall but was thwarted by an employee. Many of the dead were between 60 and 70 years old.

Tran later killed himself as police closed in on the van he was sitting in.

On Monday, a man shot and killed four people at the mushroom farm where he worked, then drove to another farm where he previously worked and killed three people there, authorities said. Chunli Zhao, 66, is in jail and faces murder charges in what police called a workplace violence case.

The murders were a blow to the state, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country and the lowest gun death rates.

For the third year in a row, the United States recorded more than 600 mass shootings in 2022 in which at least four people were killed or injured, according to Gun Violence Archive.