In the coastal city of Half Moon Bay in northern California, seven people were killed in a mass shooting on Monday at two different sites. The suspect was apprehended after driving to a police parking lot and appearing to want to turn himself in, according to officials.
Following another large-scale shooting on Saturday that left 11 people dead in the southern California city of Monterey Park, the shooting in Half Moon Bay, some 30 miles (50 km) south of San Francisco, took place.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California claimed that he was apparently visiting the Monterey Park shooting victims in the hospital when he was summoned away and notified of the incident in Half Moon Bay, some 380 miles (610 km) to the north.
Newsom apparently wrote on Twitter, “Tragedy upon tragedy.”
Chunli Zhao, age 67, was the suspect, according to San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus, who also revealed that he was employed at one of the shooting sites. Corpus referred to the locations as nurseries, while other officials claimed that farm employees were employed there. At least one of them was referred to as a mushroom farm by the local media.
“There were farm workers affected tonight. There were children on the scene at the incidents. This is a truly heartbreaking tragedy in our community,” San Mateo County Supervisor Ray Mueller told reporters. “The amount of stress that’s been on this community for weeks is really quite high.”
According to Corpus, the suspect was joining forces with the detectives, but no motive had been determined.
She claimed that a semi-automatic weapon was discovered in his vehicle.
In Half Moon Bay, deputies responding to a call discovered four bodies and a fifth victim with potentially fatal injuries at the first location, and three more bodies were discovered nearby, according to Corpus.
The arrest was captured on camera by ABC 7 in the Bay Area as two plainclothes officers and one uniformed deputy ordered the man out of his car while brandishing the weapons.
When the culprit emerged, he was knocked to the ground and started looking for weapons. With long weapons, several armed officers in uniform rushed to the scene.
According to Corpus, detectives believe the culprit drove to the station to report himself.
When a deputy noticed the car in the parking lot, Corpus said, the car’s description and license plate were already making their way around law enforcement.
Reporters spoke to a woman who saw the arrest and said she had gone to the sheriff’s office for additional information because she worked in agriculture and was worried about the welfare of the agricultural workers.
“I came down here to find out what I could about the situation and why this happened and I hadn’t expected to get quite that close to it,” Kati McHugh told reporters on the scene. “It was a little too close for my comfort.”
There were 38 mass shootings in the United States in the first 21 days of the year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which describes a mass shooting as four or more people shot or killed, not including the shooter.
