HALF MOON BAY — Renato Juarez Perez got the gut-wrenching call around 4 p.m. on Monday — one of his cousins was killed and another badly injured in the mass shooting that claimed seven lives in this coastal farming community.
The brothers, Jose and Pedro Romero Perez, are among the victims of Monday’s violence at two farms in Half Moon Bay. Jose, in his late 30s, was killed at Mountain Mushroom Farm, while Pedro, in his 20s, was badly injured there and transported to a local hospital, Juarez Perez said.
“Just two days ago, we were talking,” Juarez Perez said. Now he, along with family and friends in the U.S. and Mexico, are left wondering how — and why — the brothers were killed.
Officials say the suspected shooter, 66-year-old Half Moon Bay resident Chunli Zhao, worked at Mountain Mushroom Farm and may have been involved in a workplace dispute.
Alicia Ortega also is searching for answers. Just a few miles down the coast from where the brothers were shot, three more people were gunned down at Concord Farms, including her boyfriend and next door neighbor, Martin Martinez, who helped cultivate and pick mushrooms.
Alicia Ortega grieves at her home in Moss Beach, Calif., Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023, one day after her boyfriend was killed by a gunman in a mass shooting in Half Moon Bay, Calif. Seven lives were lost. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Ortega said she was cooking in her Moss Beach home when she received the call from a friend that Martinez had been killed.
“I’m on my way there,” Ortega told her friend.
“Don’t go,” the friend said. “The shooter is still on the loose.”
Ortega raced there anyway until she was stopped by sheriff’s deputies.
Ortega’s husband died three years ago, she said, and now she has lost Martinez, who was 50 and had no children. He had worked for Concord Farms for 27 years and had worked with Zhao about 7 years ago, she said. She doesn’t remember Martinez ever mentioning him.
“What can I tell you? Only great things about him,” she said. “He was a human being with a big heart. He cares about everyone.”
When her husband was sick, Martinez would walk with Ortega and her husband through their mobile home park for exercise. When she needed help moving him, Martinez would come over to lift him. And when her husband was dying, after Martinez finished his shift at the farm, “instead …read more
Source:: The Mercury News