A gunman killed seven people at two agricultural businesses in Northern California, plunging the state into mourning again after its third mass killing in eight days, the Associated Press reports. Officers arrested a suspect in Monday’s shootings, Chunli Zhao, 67, finding him in his car in the parking lot of a sheriff’s substation, said San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus. Seven people were found dead and an eighth injured at a farm and another location several miles away. Officials believe Zhao worked at one of the facilities and that the victims were fellow workers, Corpus said. Officials haven’t determined a motive for the shooting. California is still reeling from an attack on a Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park that killed 11 and cast a shadow over an important holiday for many Asian-American communities.
The new year has brought a shocking string of mass killings in the U.S. — six in less than three weeks, accounting for 39 deaths. Three have occurred in California since Jan. 16, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. The database tracks every mass killing — defined as four dead not including the offender — in the U.S. since 2006. The Monday killings occurred on the outskirts of Half Moon Bay, 30 miles south of San Francisco. Half Moon Bay Vice Mayor Joaquin Jimenez said the victims included Chinese and Latino farmworkers. Some workers lived at one of the facilities and children may have witnessed the shooting, she said. It wasn’t immediately clear how the two locations were connected.