Huu Can Tran was a resident of Hemet, San Jacinto Valley, Riverside County, California, United States. He was of Vietnamese descent.

Tran had once been a regular patron at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles County, California where he gave informal lessons. He also frequented the Lai Lai Ballroom and Studio in Alhambra, San Gabriel Valley.

In the 1990s, Tran met a woman at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, introduced himself and offered her free lessons. They married soon after they met.

For at least 20 years, Tran worked as a professional trucker. Here are 13 more things about him:

1. Aside from Hemet, he has lived in other parts of California including Alhambra, Arcadia, Fremont, Glendale, Monterey Park, Rosemead and San Gabriel.
2. In 1990, he was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm.
3. In 1999, he purchased a 9 mm caliber semiautomatic MAC-10 assault weapon.
4. In 2002, he registered a business called Tran’s Trucking Inc. in San Gabriel and served as its chief executive officer.
5. In 2004, he dissolved Tran’s Trucking Inc. In a corporate filing, he wrote that the company had never acquired any known assets or incurred any known debts or liabilities.
6. In 2005, he filed for divorce.
7. In 2006, a judge approved the divorce he filed in 2005.
8. In 2013, he sold his home in San Gabriel, which he had owned for more than 20 years.
9. In 2020, he bought a mobile home in a senior citizens community in Hemet.
10. On January 7, 2023, he visited the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department lobby in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County and made allegations about fraud, theft and poisoning involving his family previously based in Los Angeles. On January 9, 2023, he returned to the department with documentation supporting his allegations and never showed up again. 
11. At 10:22 p.m. on January 21, 2023, he entered the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park for the first time since 2017. With his 9 mm caliber semiautomatic MAC-10 assault weapon with an extended magazine, he opened fire, fatally shooting 11 people and wounding 10 others. At around 10:45 p.m., he walked in with the same weapon at Lai Lai Ballroom and Studio in Alhambra. He fled the scene after Brandon Tsay, then 26, wrestled the firearm away.
12. Just before 1:00 p.m. on January 22, 2023, a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team swarmed a white cargo van in the parking lot of Tokyo Central, a Japanese grocery store in Torrance, Los Angeles County, California, smashed its windows and found him dead in the driver’s seat. A Norinco 7.62 x 25 handgun was found inside the van.
13. He died at age 72. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. On January 25, 2023, Monterey Park Police Department officers recovered a motorcycle registered to him just one block south of the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park.