The Half Moon Bay mass shooter may have carried out the rampage over a $100 bill for damaged equipment, according to reports.
66-year-old Chunli Zhao, who was recently charged with killing seven people at two mushroom farms in the Northern California city of Half Moon Bay, told investigators that he was disgruntled by the bill from his boss for damage to heavy construction equipment, sparking his shooting spree.
The forklift owned by Zhao collided with a bulldozer driven by a coworker, resulting in the damage. Zhao argued that his coworker was at fault, but his manager made him pay.
Zhao then shot the manager and another employee. He allegedly killed the coworker’s wife there before going to his trailer and shooting two more workers at the California Terra Garden property.
The accused gunman then drove to a second mushroom farm, Concord Farms, where he previously worked, and killed a former assistant manager who he felt wronged by, as well as another couple.
In an interview with the television station, Zhao spoke in depth about years of harassment and long days on the farms. He said that he thinks he has a mental disorder of some kind and that the day he committed the crimes, he was not in his right mind.
The coroner’s office has 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 hometown was unknown.
“We come today to reclaim this place of death as a place of life, peace, hope, and community,” said Archbishop of San Francisco Salvatore Cordileone before he sprinkled water on the ground and on the heads of the roughly dozen people in attendance.
This comes after a string of recent mass shootings in the U.S., most recently in the case of the shooting that occurred in Monterey Park, California, during a Lunar New Year celebration, where 11 people died and nine were injured.
Since then, Senate Democrats have since introduced a bill that prohibits selling, manufacturing, transferring, and importing military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
