Two days after a mass shooting at a Lunar New Year event near Los Angeles, a suspect was taken into custody Monday in connection with the murders of seven people in a small village in northern California.
The most recent act of violence took place on two farms at Half Moon Bay, a seaside hamlet south of San Francisco.
In the double shootings, according to San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus, seven persons were killed and one was injured, and 67-year-old Half Moon Bay resident Chunli Zhao was arrested.
Monday afternoon, deputies were summoned to two nurseries near Half Moon Bay, a remote area famed for its surfing competitions and pumpkin festival, according to Corpus.
Four persons were dead and one was badly injured at one place, while three additional mortally wounded victims were discovered at the second location.
Corpus reported the presence of youngsters at one of the sites.
“It occurred in the afternoon when children were out of school, and for them to have witnessed it is unfathomable,” she explained.
Corpus stated that Zhou then drove to a Half Moon Bay sheriff’s substation, where ABC7 crews got dramatic images of him being subdued by armed authorities.
Corpus stated, “Zhao was taken into custody without incident, and a semi-automatic handgun was discovered in his vehicle.”
At the second shooting scene, which was a short distance from the mushroom farm where four people were slain, sheriff’s deputies surrounded a roadside business strip containing shops that offer party rentals, gardening supplies, and other services.
As the fresh tragedy unfolded, authorities in southern California were still investigating what prompted an elderly Asian man to open fire on 11 people celebrating the Lunar New Year at a suburban dance hall on Saturday night, before committing suicide as police closed in.
Sheriff Robert Luna of Los Angeles County stated that Huu Can Tran, who was arrested in 1994 for illegal possession of a handgun, fired 42 shots during the attack in Monterey Park.
Why did a psychopath do this? he stated.
Luna said that officers were informed that some of Tran’s victims may have known him.
The news of a second mass shooting in California within 48 hours sent shock waves throughout the state, which has among of the tightest gun prohibitions in the United States.
“I am dealing with victims of a mass shooting at the hospital when I am taken away to be informed on another shooting. In this case, Half Moon Bay. “Tragedy upon tragedy,” Governor Gavin Newsom tweeted.
The mass shooting on Saturday night was the worst in the United States since a teenager massacred 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas in May.
On Monday, an image began to emerge of the perpetrator in Monterey Park, a man who, according to his marriage license, was an immigrant from China and a former regular at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio.
Tran’s ex-wife told CNN that the couple met there when he volunteered to give her informal lessons twenty years ago.
The woman, who did not wish to be identified, stated that they married shortly thereafter, but the marriage did not last; the divorce was finalized in 2006.
She stated that Tran, who occasionally worked as a truck driver, was neither violent nor irritable.
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CNN said that a man who claimed to have previously known Tran said he would complain about dance instructors who would allegedly say “evil things about him.”
The man told the station that he was “hostile to a large number of people” in the area.
The search of Tran’s mobile home in Hemet, 140 kilometers east of Los Angeles, yielded a firearm, gadgets, and ammo, according to Luna.
Police in the city said earlier this month that Tran had made “allegations of fraud, theft, and poisoning involving his family in the Los Angeles area ten to twenty years ago.”
The family of a 65-year-old man is financially stable. According to My Nhan, the tragedy was “still sinking in.”
She spent several years attending the dance studio in Monterey Park on the weekends, according to a statement.
“It was what she enjoyed doing. Saturday was, however, her last dance.”
In the midst of the tragedy, a tale of valor emerged.
Brandon Tsay, 26 years old, claimed that he wrestled with Tran when the elderly man arrived at another dancing class, in what police suspect was a second, premeditated assault.
“He was hitting me across the face and hitting me in the back of the head,” Tsay told ABC. “I was using my elbows to take the gun away from him.”
“Finally, at one point, I was able to wrest the rifle from him, throw him aside, create space, and aim the gun at him… “He was shouting ‘Get the hell out of here!’”
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