XPost: alt.agriculture.misc, alt.california, alt.politics.democrats
XPost: sac.politics, talk.politics.guns

HALF MOON BAY — Two years after seven farmworkers lost their lives when a disgruntled employee allegedly went on a rampage through two local farms,
the victims’ families and the survivors continue to wait for the
conclusion of lawsuits seeking compensation — and for the shooter to be
tried.

Though many farmworkers and families have received at least some
compensation following the incident through an investigation by the
Department of Justice, the alleged shooter’s case is in its early stages. Several civil lawsuits remain undecided, leaving workers in flux as they
await justice.
“This murder was such a tragedy and hurt us really badly, and we are still
left wondering what has happened to the murderer,” said Jun Chen, 55, a
worker at Concord Farms who was there on the day of the shooting. He spoke
in Mandarin through an interpreter Friday at a news conference called to
bring attention to the case.

The suspect, 67-year-old Chunli Zhao, is bound for trial after a grand
jury indicted him early last year on a slew of murder charges in the
January 2023 shooting spree. No trial date has been set. Zhao, who has
pleaded not guilty, remains held at the San Mateo County jail and is due
back in court on April 29.

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe is expected to decide
by then whether to pursue the death penalty against Zhao.

In the meantime, some victims have been awarded compensation for unpaid overtime hours that were exposed in the wake of the shooting. Last year,
the U.S. Department of Labor reached settlements with the two farms
involved in the shooting, Concord Farms Inc. and California Terra Garden
Inc., who were accused of violating both the Migrant and Seasonal
Agricultural Worker Protection Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. The settlements paid out $450,000 in back wages and damages to dozens of
employees.

That’s in addition to $167,000 in fines levied against the two farms in
June 2023 by California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health. It
hit California Terra Garden with 22 violations and $113,800 in penalties
for health and safety violations, while Concord Farms — where the killing
spree ended — was fined $51,770 for 19 violations.

Some of the families of those killed in the shootings are also pursuing
their own suits against the company, seeking damages over wrongful death
that they said came about from negligent ownership and unsafe working conditions.

In April, the families of Pedro Romero Perez, who was shot five times by
Zhao and permanently disabled, and his brother Jose Romero Perez, who
died, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against California Terra Garden and
its owner, Xianmin Guan, alleging that he failed to adequately respond to previous violent incidents and take steps that could have prevented the shooting.

This month, the Perez brothers’ lawyers refiled the case in court, taking
aim at not only California Terra Garden but also seven other LLCs which
they allege operate as one single company called Forest Mushroom Food
Inc., which also uses the name “Guan’s Mushrooms.”

“The assets of those other sister entities should be used to satisfy any judgment or verdict if there is one in favor of the victims of the
shooting,” said the Perez brothers’ attorney Duffy Magilligan. “In order
to get them adequate compensation, we want to make sure that there’s no
attempt to move assets out of the California Terra Gardens and into one of these sister organizations.”

The lawsuit alleges that Guan’s Mushrooms was the “nerve center” and “overarching controller” of the Half Moon Bay facility and others in
California and on the East Coast, according to court documents. The
lawsuit also cites previous instances of violence among employees living
in farmworker housing that owners did nothing about, including when a
tenant attempted to shoot another tenant in 2022.

Despite Zhao’s documented past of violence, including an assault against a co-worker just days before the shooting, Guan did not take any measures to ensure the safety of their employees, the lawyers allege.

A person answering the phone Friday at a listed number for Guan’s
Mushrooms would not offer a comment.

Some workers at Concord Farms, the other farm targeted by Zhao, have
received compensation. Jinsheng Liu, who worked at Concord Farms, has so
far been awarded $33,000 in benefits from his employer to pay for
intensive psychological treatment in addition to back pay in the
Department of Justice case.

Liu’s lawyer George Surmaitis said that a barrier to compensation has been
the lack of trust immigrant communities have in services and the lack of understanding that can come from cultural differences.

“There are so many people and agencies coming at them, so there’s this mistrust,” Surmaitis said. “To some extent, they don’t even want benefits, because they don’t understand that they’re entitled to it.”

Juan Flores-Lopez, who manages the farm at California Terra Garden, said
he doesn’t know of any co-workers who have brought suits against the
company.

“I think that the workers who were here — we should get some sort of compensation,” he said.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/01/26/half-moon-bay-shooting-survivors- seek-justice/

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