Seven more victims were shot and killed in an agricultural area close to San Francisco just two days after 11 people were murdered in a dance studio in the Los Angeles area by a shooter, as California experienced one of the deadliest outbreaks of mass shootings in recent times. California staggered by deadly back-to-back mass shootings.
Authorities claimed that they had not determined the inspiration behind either of the shooting sprees, which seemed especially puzzling given that both of the suspects were men in their retirement years, much older than is typical for those who carry out the senselessly frequent and deadly mass shootings in the United States.
Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, claimed he learned of the deaths in northern California on Monday as he was visiting wounded victims of the massacre that occurred on Saturday night in the Monterey Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles.
“Tragedy upon tragedy,” Newsom wrote on Twitter.
Otherwise, there didn’t seem to be much connecting the back-to-back shootings.
The most recent shooting spree occurred in Half Moon Bay, a coastal community about 30 miles south of San Francisco, where a shooter opened fire on two separate groups of farm labourers, leaving a total of seven people dead and one seriously injured before fleeing.
Shortly after, the alleged shooter, Chunli Zhao, 67, was apprehended after being seen sitting in his car outside a sheriff’s office, where investigators claim he had gone to turn himself in.
California staggered by deadly back-to-back mass shootings as Sheriff Christina Corpus of San Mateo County stated at an evening press conference that a semi-automatic weapon was discovered in his vehicle.
According to Corpus, the suspect had worked at one of the two crime locations and was “fully cooperating” with detectives as a result of his detention. The locations, where some of the workers also resided, were referred to by her as agricultural “nurseries.” One location, according to local media, was a mushroom farm.
One person was killed and seven others were injured in a “shooting between several individuals” on Monday night in Oakland, according to police, in a separate incident that received much less media attention. The circumstances point to gang violence. Police provided little specifics, but stated that all of the survivors had found their own ways to local hospitals.
News of the massacre in Half Moon Bay surfaced as police worked through a second full day of their investigation into the shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, just east of downtown Los Angeles, where a gunman shot 11 people to death. Nine others were wounded.
Huu Can Tran, 72, allegedly drove to a nearby town and broke into a second dance club. However, the club owner confronted him and wrestled the weapon away during a brief struggle.
Tran, a regular at the Star Ballroom, which caters primarily to older dancing enthusiasts, escaped once more and disappeared over night.
On Sunday morning, nearly 12 hours after going on the rampage, as police surrounded him in the town of Torrance, south of Los Angeles, he shot himself to death in his abandoned getaway vehicle, a cargo van, according to authorities.
