HALF MOON BAY — Just more than a year after losing his brother and nearly losing his own life in a mass shooting that spanned two Half Moon Bay farms, one survivor says he is seeking justice for himself, his brother and family, and farmworkers across the nation.
“I’m still healing. I’m still in pain,” Pedro Felix Romero Perez, the plaintiff in a new lawsuit against California Terra Garden, said through a translator at a press conference on Friday.
Perez, 24, was one of dozens of farmworkers living and working at two Half Moon Bay mushroom farms, Concord Farms and California Terra Garden. He and his brother, Jose Romero Perez, had moved to the area from Mexico to build a better life for themselves and their family back home. Those dreams would come crashing down on Jan. 23, 2023.
Pedro and Jose, 38, were the first shot when Chunli Zhao, their coworker, carried out the deadliest mass shooting in San Mateo County history. Police say Zhao killed four farmworkers at one farm, then drove three miles south to his previous employer, Concord Farms, where he shot and killed three more, following a dispute with his supervisor over a $100 repair bill for a forklift.
The shooting has left Pedro, who survived five gunshot wounds to the face, stomach and arm, with debilitating pain, preventing him from working for more than a year. Pedro declined to talk about the day of the shooting but said he thinks of his brother daily.
“We were inseparable,” Pedro said. “I’m always thinking about him and I just don’t understand how this happened.”
Zhao, 67, was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held in a Redwood City jail.
The lawsuit, brought by Cotchett, Pitre and McCarthy, LLP, alleges the farm “could have prevented this tragedy,” but that it “failed to adequately secure their premises against reasonably foreseeable criminal acts.” California Terra Garden did not immediate respond to a request for comment.
Beyond detailing the “deplorable” living conditions — where farmworkers slept in trailers with plywood floors and heated food on makeshift wood-burning stoves — the lawsuit also alleges that Xianmin Guan, the owner, took no action to secure the farm, despite knowing of Zhao’s violent history, as well as a shooting at the farm just a few months earlier.
In July 2022, the farm’s former manager, Martin Medina, was accused of breaking into a farmworker’s trailer, threatening to kill the man and his family. Medina fired a shot from a handgun that went through the trailer and into an occupied one nearby. No injuries were reported but Joe Cotchett, whose firm is handling the case, noted the person occupying the trailer was one of seven killed in the 2023 shooting.
In 2013, a one-time roommate of Zhao’s filed a restraining order against him after alleging Zhao tried to smother him to death with a pillow and threatened to use a knife to “split” open his head, court records show.
Guan “had the means and ability to protect Jose and others from Medina and other violent criminals that came onto the farm, including Chunli Zhao,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Everyone has a right to feel safe in their home in the state of California, and Jose Perez and Pedro Perez had their rights violated on Jan. 23, 2023 by California Terra Garden where they were living,” said Duffy Magilligan, an attorney representing Pedro. “Not only did California Terra Garden violate those rights by providing squalid living conditions for the farmworkers but they violated those right by not providing a place where their tenants felt safe.”
Farmworkers up and down the state are struggling with similar unsafe and inhumane housing and work conditions, Cotchett said during the press conference. The lawsuit is also meant to force state and federal officials to prioritize securing better living and working conditions for farmworkers across the nation, Cotchett said.
“It’s a much bigger picture than just sitting here with Pedro. It’s a picture about what we’re doing as a state, as a nation. The nonsense has to stop,” Cotchett said.
What support local farmworkers have received has largely come from ALAS, a nonprofit focused on providing services to immigrant and farmworker residents on the coast.
Belinda Hernandez-Arriaga, the executive director of ALAS and a mental health provider, said the extent of squalor people were living in was often hidden from nonprofit staff, not to mention local officials. Given the housing shortage and high cost of rent, red-tagging the units would have left many homeless, she added.
“Even as we speak in Silicon Valley, where wealth runs very deep, we have our farmworkers who are producing the vegetables you and I eat not having the rights, not having the equity, living in despair,” Hernandez Arriaga said during the press conference.
Hernandez-Arriaga echoed Cotchett’s frustration with the lack of progress for farmworker living and working conditions but also lauded local, state and federal elected officials for their recent support. She specifically thanked San Mateo County Supervisor Ray Mueller and U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Palo Alto Democrat.
Both have lobbied for funds to develop farmworker housing in the area, including 46 new units at 880 Stone Pine Road in Half Moon Bay.
Still, more state and federal action is needed to make meaningful change, particularly around addressing housing needs, Cotchett and Hernandez-Arriaga agreed.
“We’re seeing a movement here of people saying, ‘How are we going to make this change?’ But we also have to continue that movement forward with advocacy, with what’s happening here today,” Hernandez-Arriaga said. “Half Moon Bay can be a model but we have to continue it throughout the state.”
The suit was filed in San Mateo County on Wednesday and seeks unspecified damages for economic losses related to Jose’s death and Pedro’s injuries, which have required three surgeries and left him unable to work. Magilligan said it was too soon to put a number on the damages they’re seeking.