Suspect Chunli Zhao in custody after 7 dead in mass shooting in California’s Half Moon Bay
- Chinese farmworkers reportedly among victims of shootings in Half Moon Bay, 30 miles from San Francisco; suspect, 67, is thought to be a colleague of the deceased
- Incident comes shortly after Huu Can Tran, 72, killed 11 at a dance hall near Los Angeles then killed himself; China is warning its citizens in US to avoid crowded places
Seven people were killed in two related shootings on Monday at agricultural businesses in a northern California community, less than two days after an attack at a dance hall that killed 11 during Lunar New Year celebrations.
The authorities said they had not identified the motive for the state’s rampages, which seemed especially baffling in part because the suspects in each incident were men of retirement age - 67 and 72 - which is much older than is typical for perpetrators of deadly mass shootings that have become numbingly routine in the United States.
Investigators were still probing the motives behind the killings, which also stood out among the scourge of mass shootings in the US for the community impacted, as gun violence is usually seen as rare among Asians and Asian Americans.
The nonpartisan Violence Project says 79 per cent of mass shooters from 1966-2020 were under the age of 45, and says only 6.4 per cent of mass shooters in that time were Asian.
In the wake of the latest killings, China’s foreign ministry called for its citizens in the US to “pay close attention to the local security situation” and “avoid going to places where people gather”.
Officers arrested a suspect in Monday’s shootings, 67-year-old Chunli Zhao, after they found him in his car in the car park of a sheriff’s substation, San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus said.
Four people were found dead and a fifth injured from gunshot wounds at a farm, and officers found three other people killed at another location several kilometres away, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Officials believe Zhao is a worker at one of the facilities and that the victims were workers as well, Corpus said. Corpus said officials had not determined a motive for the shooting.
The new year has brought a shocking string of mass killings in the US – six in less than three weeks, accounting for 39 deaths.
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Three have occurred in California since January 16, according to a database compiled by Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. The database tracks every mass killing – defined as four dead not including the offender – committed in the US since 2006.
The latest mass killing occurred on the outskirts of Half Moon Bay, a city about 50km (30 miles) south of San Francisco.
Half Moon Bay Vice Mayor Joaquin Jimenez said the victims included Chinese and Latino farmworkers. Some workers at one facility lived on the premises and children may have witnessed the shooting, she said.
Corpus said it was not immediately clear how the two locations were connected.
The Sheriff’s Office first received reports of a shooting just before 2.30pm and found four people dead from gunshot wounds and a fifth person injured at the first scene.
Soon afterwards officers found three more people dead from gunshot wounds at a second location nearby, Captain Eamonn Allen said in a news release.
About two hours after first responding, a sheriff’s deputy noticed the suspect, Zhao, in his car parked outside a sheriff’s substation in a shopping centre and arrested him, recognising the car by its number plate.
A video of the arrest showed three officers approaching a parked car with drawn weapons. Zhao got out of the car, and the officers pulled him to the ground, put him in handcuffs, and led him away. A weapon was found in his vehicle, officials said.
The video was captured by Kati McHugh, a Half Moon Bay resident who witnessed the arrest. The sheriff’s department believes Zhao acted alone.
“We’re still trying to understand exactly what happened and why, but it’s just incredibly, incredibly tragic,” said state Senator Josh Becker, who represents the area and called it “a very close-knit” agricultural community.
Aerial television images showed police officers collecting evidence from a farm with dozens of greenhouses.
Half Moon Bay is a small coastal city with agricultural roots, home to about 12,000 people. The city and surrounding San Mateo county area is known for producing flowers as well as vegetables like Brussels sprouts. The county allows cannabis farming in certain areas.
It is a majority white community and about 5 per cent of the population is Asian, according to Census data.
“We are sickened by today’s tragedy in Half Moon Bay,” said county official Dave Pine. “We have not even had time to grieve for those lost in the terrible shooting in Monterey Park. Gun violence must stop.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom said he was visiting wounded survivors from Saturday night’s massacre in Monterey Park, near Los Angeles, when he was informed of Monday’s killings near San Francisco.
“Tragedy upon tragedy,” Newsom wrote on Twitter.
On January 16, a teenage mother and her baby were among six people killed in a shooting at a home in California’s Central Valley.
In yet another surge of violence in the state, a shoot-out at a gas station killed one and wounded seven on Monday night in the San Francisco Bay Area, police said.
Additional reporting by Reuters and Agence France-Presse
