Half Moon Bay Immigrant Community Reels From Mass Shooting of Farmworkers
Mr. Perez and his injured brother, Pedro Romero Perez, were identified by the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office in a complaint filed ahead of a brief court appearance by Mr. Zhao that ended with a judge scheduling an arraignment for Feb. 16. Mr. Zhao, who was being detained without bail, wore a red jumpsuit and repeatedly covered his face with a piece of paper.
Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Steve Wagstaffe, the San Mateo County district attorney, said Mr. Zhao, who has been assigned a court-appointed attorney, spoke to investigators. He said prosecutors now have a sense of the motive, but he declined to reveal specifics.
Mr. Wagstaffe said he would consider seeking the death penalty in the case. “Making that decision on the death penalty is something that will take place over the course of the next several months,” he said. “We have so much more to learn.”
If he were to seek the death penalty, it would be a largely symbolic decision. While California has the largest death row in the country, with 690 condemned inmates, the state has not carried out an execution since 2006, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a moratorium on capital punishment.
The massacre in Half Moon Bay came just two days after a gunman stormed a popular dance hall in Monterey Park, an Asian American enclave hundreds of miles away in Southern California, and killed 11 people celebrating the Lunar New Year. The suspect, Huu Can Tran, 72, shot himself dead when approached by the police in another suburb about 30 miles away, authorities said.
Investigators in Los Angeles County are still trying to determine a motive in the Monterey Park killings, but the authorities in both cases say the suspects apparently decided to settle unknown grievances against specific people with a spasm of violence.
Residents of Half Moon Bay, which Marc Berman, the state assemblyman for the area, said was “as close to small town America as we get in the Bay Area,” were left shaken.