The Los Angeles Police Department in California, USA, found a large number of guns and ammunition in a high-rise apartment in Hollywood this week. including multiple rifles pointed at a nearby park through the window. The scene was reminiscent of the deadly shooting in Las Vegas in 2017: when a gunman opened fire from the upper floors of the hotel into the crowd on the ground, killing 60 people.
The Los Angeles Police Department previously suspected that this was another group shooting attempt, but issued a statement on the 2nd denying this speculation, saying that the investigation found no evidence that Braxton Johnson, the suspect who possessed these guns, was planning to carry out a group shooting , determined that public safety was not threatened.
According to the Associated Press, the police received a report on January 31 that security guards and people outside the building of a high-rise apartment were threatened with violence by apartment resident Johnson. The police then searched Johnson’s apartment on the 18th floor and found two automatic rifles and multiple large-capacity magazines, which are weapons that are not allowed to be owned by private individuals according to California law; there are also three semi-automatic pistols, a sniper rifle, a Take a shotgun, and a thousand rounds of ammunition. The weapons were powerful enough to “cause significant injury to a large number of people,” police said.
The Los Angeles Police Department said on the 1st that additional rifles were aimed at a nearby park, but did not specify which park. The online map shows that there is a dog park next to the apartment.
According to the investigation, Johnson had only recently moved into the apartment and was unarmed when he was detained on January 31. Police charged him with a number of offenses including possessing an assault weapon, but he denied the charges.
The scenes of hoarding and racking guns in high-rise buildings reminded the American media of the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017. On the evening of October 1 of that year, a gunman continued to shoot from a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel to the crowd attending an open-air music festival downstairs, killing 58 people. Two more seriously injured died later.