On Monday, a mass shooting at two sites in the coastal community of Half Moon Bay in northern California killed seven people. The suspect was apprehended after driving to a police parking lot and apparently attempting to turn himself in, according to officials.
A second large-scale shooting that left 11 people dead occurred on Saturday in the southern California city of Monterey Park, which is located approximately 30 miles (50 km) south of San Francisco.
The shooting in Half Moon Bay, roughly 380 miles (610 km) to the north, was reported to California Governor Gavin Newsom while he was visiting Monterey Park victims in the hospital.
Tragic upon tragic, wrote Newsom on Twitter.
Immigrant laborers in the area were reportedly impacted by recent torrential rainstorms that devastated the rural area and caused extensive damage. In the three weeks after Christmas, many atmospheric rivers resulted in the deaths of 20 individuals. statewide
Chunli Zhao, 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.
“Farm laborers were impacted tonight. Children were there when the incidents happened. Our town has experienced a genuinely devastating catastrophe “Ray Mueller, the supervisor for San Mateo County, said to reporters. “This neighborhood has been under a lot of stress for a number of weeks.”
Although the suspect was helping the investigation, a motive hadn’t yet been determined, Corpus added.
She claimed that a semi-automatic weapon was discovered in his car.
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.
Two plainclothes cops and one uniformed deputy ordered the man out of his car while brandishing their weapons, as seen on camera by ABC 7 in the Bay Area during the arrest. The suspect was brought to the ground and searched for weapons when he first appeared. Several uniformed officers carrying long weapons flocked to the area.
Detectives, according to Corpus, think the offender drove to the station to turn himself up. According to Corpus, the car’s description and license plate were already known to police officials when a deputy spotted it in the parking lot.
Reporters spoke to a woman who saw the arrest and said she went to the sheriff’s office to seek more information because she worked in agriculture and was worried about the welfare of the farm workers.
Kati McHugh told reporters on the scene, “I came down here to find out all I could about the circumstance and why this happened and I hadn’t intended to come nearly so close to it. It was a bit too near for comfort, I thought.
The Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot or killed, excluding the shooter, reports that there were 38 mass shootings in the United States in the first 21 days of the year.
