Zhao acted alone Monday when he entered a mushroom farm where he worked in Half Moon Bay, shooting and killing four people and seriously wounding a fifth. He then drove to a nearby farm where he had previously worked and killed three more people, said Eamonn Allen, a sheriff’s spokesman.
The charges include additional charges that could result in the death penalty or life in prison without parole, although Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued a moratorium on executions. Among those accusations are that Zhao used a weapon, caused serious bodily injury and killed multiple people.
The coroner’s office named six of the victims: Zhishen Liu, 73, of San Francisco; Marciano Martinez Jimenez, 50, of Moss Beach, California; Aixiang Zhang, 74, of San Francisco; Qizhong Cheng, 66, of Half Moon Bay; Jingzhi Lu, 64, of Half Moon Bay; and Yetao Bing, 43, whose place of origin is unknown. Charging documents identify José Romero Pérez as the other person killed and Pedro Romero Pérez as the eighth victim, who survived the shooting.
Authorities have said some of the people killed were migrant workers. Some people were shot in trailers on the property, Wagstaffe said.
Servando Martínez Jiménez said that his brother Marciano Martínez Jiménez, one of the victims, was a delivery man and manager of one of the farms. He never mentioned Zhao or said anything about problems with other workers.
“He was a good person. He was polite and kind to everyone. He never had any problems with anyone. I don’t understand why he went through all this,” Martínez Jiménez said in Spanish.Marciano Martínez Jiménez had lived in the United States for 28 years after arriving from the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Servando Martínez Jiménez said he is working with the Mexican consulate to bring his brother’s body home.
It would not have been Zhao’s first workplace rage, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. In 2013, Zhao was charged with threatening to split a co-worker’s head in with a knife and separately trying to suffocate the man with a pillow, the Chronicle reported, according to court documents.
The two were roommates and worked at a restaurant, and the man, identified as Jingjiu Wang, filed a temporary restraining order against Zhao that was granted but is no longer in effect. Wang could not immediately be reached, the Chronicle reported.
Zhao is from China and has lived in the United States for at least a dozen years, Wagstaffe said. He had legal papers to live in the country at one point and investigators were determining whether it was still valid, Wagstaffe said. They were also looking into his previous contact with the police.
Shootings broke out at California Terra Garden, formerly known as Mountain Mushroom Farm, and at nearby Concord Farms.
Most farmworkers in the area are Latino, but Mountain Mushroom Farm was one of the few that employed Asian workers, said Belinda Hernandez, executive director of ALAS, a Half Moon Bay-based farmworker advocacy group. . She said mushroom farms offer the benefit of year-round labor.
David Oates, a spokesman for the California Terra Garden, said he did not know how long Zhao worked there and that he was one of 35 employees who stayed behind when he changed ownership. He declined to comment further Wednesday, saying he would defer to police. And Aaron Tung, co-owner of Concord Farms, did not respond to a request for additional comment Wednesday.
Half Moon Bay is a small, sleepy, coastal, farming town about 30 miles south of San Francisco. Its sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean make it a popular spot for hikers and tourists, who flock for surfing and for an annual giant pumpkin festival.