- Max Mazz
- From BBC News in Seattle, USA
4 hours ago
Credit, Portal
caption,
The suspect was arrested at a local police station hours after the attack in Half Moon Bay.
The state of California in the United States was the scene of two massacres in three days.
On Monday (January 23) a man shot dead seven former employees in the coastal town of Half Moon Bay. The victims were all ChineseAmerican farm workers.
The suspect, identified as 67yearold Zhao Chunli, was arrested after driving to a police station.
The massacre came as the state’s population mourned 11 people in Monterey Park about six hours southeast of Half Moon Bay who died in an attack during the Lunar New Year celebrations.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he was meeting with victims of the Monterey Park shooting at the hospital when he was told of the second massacre “tragedy upon tragedy,” he said.
‘Indescribable’
The most recent massacre in the state, which killed seven people, took place at two different locations in the Half Moon Bay community.
Four bodies were found at a mushroom farm, while the other three were later found at a nearby trucking company. An eighth victim is in critical condition in hospital.
Several children who had been dropped from school and were living on the farm saw the attack, San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus said.
“This kind of attack is terrible. It’s a tragedy we hear about all too often, but today it happened here in San Mateo County,” he said. “It is indescribable for children to experience this.”
After carrying out the killings, the suspect drove to a local police station, where his arrest was captured on camera.
US news channels showed footage of Zhao Chunli’s arrest.
He was found with a semiautomatic pistol that may have been used in the attack and was cooperating with police, Sheriff Corpus said.
Credit, Police/CBS
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Photo of Zhao Chunli’s driver’s license
Dave Pine, chairman of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, told the Associated Press the attacks were perpetrated by a “disgruntled worker.”
“We are disgusted by today’s tragedy in Half Moon Bay,” Pine said in a statement. “There are just too many guns in this country, something has to change.”
According to the US nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, the Half Moon Bay attack is the 37th mass shooting in the country in just 24 days. They define a massacre as an attack that injured or killed at least four people.
As details of the Half Moon Bay attack emerge, detectives across the state are still investigating the motive for the Monterey Park massacre. There, an elderly Asian immigrant killed 11 people in a dance studio and then killed himself as police approached.