The suspect in the Half Moon Bay mass shooting that left seven people dead and one injured, said in a jailhouse interview Thursday with NBC Bay Area‘s Janelle Wang that he was the gunman.
Chunli Zhao said he drove to a local police station after the shootings and surrendered. Zhao, who was a reportedly a farmworker, said he endured years of bullying and long hours working on the farms and was never able to have his grievances addressed. He also claimed to suffer from mental illness and said he wasn’t in his right frame of mind when the shootings occurred.
From NBC Bay Area:
Zhao told Wang he has been in the U.S. for 11 years and has a green card. He bought the gun used in the killings in 2021 and didn’t run into any obstacles when making the purchase.
He also expressed remorse for the killings, Wang said.
Zhao said he has a wife he lives with in Half Moon Bay and a 40-year-old daughter who lives in China.
Zhao, who was arrested Monday, was formally charged Wednesday with seven counts of murder and one count of attempted murder by the San Mateo District Attorney’s Office. Police found four people dead and one wounded at the mushroom farm where he worked and later found three more people dead at a separate site about 2 miles away.
Watch NBC Bay Area’s report on the story below:
