Seven people are dead, one is in critical condition, and a 67-year-old man is in custody after he allegedly opened fire in two separate shootings in an unincorporated area of Half Moon Bay on Monday, Jan. 23, according to the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office.
Responding to the first major incident as county sheriff since being sworn in less than three weeks prior, Christina Corpus said at a news conference that the suspect in the mass shooting, Chunli Zhao of Half Moon Bay, was identified as a worker at one of the farms where the shootings occurred. He was taken into custody “without incident” after Deputy Sheriff Kenneth Laperruque found him in his car in the parking lot of the Half Moon Bay Sheriff’s Office substation, she said. He allegedly had a semi-automatic handgun with him in his car.
Zhao did not enter a plea, his lawyers instead requesting that the judge give them more time to meet with their client. His arraignment was rescheduled to Feb. 16.
Zhao is charged with seven counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, the highest number ever filed for a single incident in San Mateo County according to San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe.
If convicted, Zhao could face life in prison without parole or the death penalty.
Two crimes scenes with multiple victims
Deputies responded to the incident at about 2:22 p.m. to the 12700 block of San Mateo Road, or Highway 92, in unincorporated San Mateo County, on reports of a shooting involving multiple victims, according to Corpus.
Once there, deputies found four people dead with gunshot wounds, Corpus said. They also found a fifth person with gunshot wounds who was taken to Stanford Medical Center with life-threatening injuries.
Shortly after, three additional victims were found dead with gunshot wounds at another location in the 2100 block of Cabrillo Highway South.
At a press conference on Jan. 24, Corpus said five men and two women had died in the shooting, and the Mexican Consulate of San Francisco said that two of the people who died in Monday’s shooting were from Mexico. An eighth victim, also of Mexican ancestry, is at Stanford Medical Center and was listed in stable condition.
Six of the seven victims from Monday’s mass shooting have been identified by the San Mateo County Coroner’s Office; the seventh victim has been “tentatively identified,” but the coroner’s office is withholding their name pending notification of next of kin.
The victims’ names are Marciano Martinez Jimenez, 50, of Moss Beach; Zhushen Liu, 73, of San Francisco; Qizhong Cheng, 66, of Half Moon Bay; Yetao Bing, 43, who had no listed city of residence; Aixiang Zhang, 74, of San Francisco; and Jingzhu Lu, 64, of Half Moon Bay.
Corpus noted that the incident took place in a rural part of the county where people live, including children who were out of school and may have been present.
“For children to witness this is unspeakable,” she said.
At a news conference Tuesday, Jan. 24, in Half Moon Bay, Gov. Gavin Newsom addressed the crowd seeming visibly shaken.
He held up a paper with talking points that he’d written for previous mass shootings, including at the Gilroy Garlic Festival and Monterey Park, and shook his head. Reading a list of cities and schools and venues that had suffered a mass shooting, he said, “Now I have to add Half Moon Bay.”
The common denominator, he said, was guns. “What the hell is wrong with us?” he asked.
“Our hearts are broken,” Dave Pine, president of the county Board of Supervisors, said during a press conference. “We grieve tonight for the deceased members of our community. This is a horrific event, one that we would never imagine would occur in San Mateo County. Gun violence in this country is at completely unacceptable levels, and it’s really hit home tonight.”
Pine said that “there are simply too many guns in this country,” something he said he and his fellow supervisors planned to do “everything in our power” to change.
Corpus confirmed that Zhao was an employee at Mountain Mushroom Farm, where one of the shootings took place and said that was the only connection investigators have found between 67-year-old suspect Chunli Zhao and victims so far. Some of the victims were part of the migrant community, she said.
Wagstaffe called the mass shooting an “unprecedented tragedy.” Monday’s mass shooting is the deadliest in San Mateo County history, officials said.
David Oates, a representative for the farm where Zhao was employed, said officials at the farm, which had 34 other employees, were “shocked and grief-stricken over the senseless loss of four of our friends and long-time employees.”
“We pray for the team member that remains in critical condition,” Oates said, adding that the company is fully cooperating with law enforcement and providing grief counseling to its employees.
Oates said that as of March 2022 the Mountain Mushroom Farm had a new owner and the farm was now called California Terra Garden.
The county is providing counseling services to community members at the I.D.E.S. Hall in Half Moon Bay, according to county supervisors.
Half Moon Bay Vice Mayor Joaquin Jimenez said that the city had been receiving phone calls and text messages from family members wanting to know if their relatives were okay.
“We hope they are. We hope they will be reunited,” he said, adding that he hoped the event would be “an eye-opener” about gun violence.
The sheriff’s office tweeted the information at 3:48 p.m that “multiple victims” were involved. By 4:55 p.m., the sheriff’s office tweeted that the suspect had been arrested and was no longer a threat to the community.
Officials condemn gun violence
Officials spoke out Monday, condemning gun violence and sharing words of sympathy for the Half Moon Bay community.
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, released the following statement about the mass shooting, which occurred in her congressional District 16 in Half Moon Bay.
“I continue to monitor the unfolding tragedy that has taken place in Half Moon Bay. My gratitude to the San Mateo Sheriff’s Office who took the suspect into custody and are working the two scenes of the murders,” she said. “Half Moon Bay is a beloved and tight-knit community, and we all stand with them and the families of the victims during this dark hour.”
“First Monterey Park and now Half Moon Bay,” said San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa in a released statement, referring to an earlier mass shooting that happened on Jan. 21 in the San Gabriel Valley area. “Enough is enough. How many more must die?”
Canepa said the details of the events were “sparse,” but he noted that they had one thing in common: guns.
“My heart breaks for the families,” he said.
State Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, in a statement on Twitter, said his thoughts “go out to all affected.”
“Gun violence has come to our district today and I will do whatever I can to support the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department and Half Moon Bay city officials during this tragic event,” Becker said.
In a statement, newly elected San Mateo County District 3 Supervisor Ray Mueller said he was “shocked and saddened by this news.”
Mueller, who was on-site in Half Moon Bay, said that his “heart was with the community and families” impacted by the shooting. He said he had spoken with several individuals with “one degree of separation” from the victims and was working to connect farmworkers and other community members with counseling services.
Newsom said on Twitter that he was at the “hospital with the victims of a mass shooting, when I get pulled away to be briefed about another mass shooting.”
“This time in Half Moon Bay,” he added.
President Joe Biden had been briefed by Homeland Security on the mass shooting, according to his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. The president asked federal law enforcement “to provide any necessary assistance to the local authorities,” Jean-Pierre tweeted.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is providing the county sheriff’s office with investigative and forensic resources to assist in the ongoing investigation, the San Francisco FBI office said. However, the FBI said that the sheriff’s office remains the lead investigative agency on the case.
This incident marks the second mass shooting in California in three days, and the fourth in the state since the beginning of 2023, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. Ten people were killed and another 10 injured when 72-year-old Huu Can Tran opened fire at a dance hall during a Chinese Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park on Jan. 21.
Anti-gun violence advocates took to social media to express frustration and grief about the news of another mass shooting.
“We are in a perpetual state of grief,” tweeted March For Our Lives, a youth-led organization that formed in the wake of the shooting that killed 17 and injured 17 more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. “We must demand for immediate solutions to end the epidemic of gun violence. We are not safe anywhere.”
Three Democratic legislators, including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, introduced a pair of Senate bills on Jan. 23 to protect communities from weapons like the one used in the Monterey Park shooting. These two bills would “ban the sale, transfer, manufacture and importation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines” and raise the purchasing age to 21, according to a press release from Feinstein.
Making reference to the Monterey Park shootings, Biden praised the assault weapons ban and urged Congress to approve the proposed legislation.
“Communities across America have been struck by tragedy after tragedy,” he said. “There can be no greater responsibility than to do all we can to ensure the safety of our children, our communities, and our nation.”
Bay City News Service contributed to this report.
Email Staff Writer Leah Worthington at lworthington@rwcpulse.com.
