After sleeping with a Glock-17 semiautomatic pistol under his pillow for two years, accused Half Moon Bay mass killer Chunli Zhao told investigators he was set into a rage after a mushroom farm supervisor demanded he pay $100 over a work accident that he insisted wasn’t his fault, sources with direct knowledge of the matter told NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit.
Zhao, 66, is being held on murder charges for the deaths of seven farm workers and attempted murder of an eighth worker.
The case being developed by investigators suggests that Zhao methodically hunted down and executed coworkers that he had held long grudges against. Sources say Zhao recalled that he bought the 9 mm pistol at a local store two years before, after being bullied by co-workers.
But what triggered the massacre Monday, authorities say, was a dispute Zhao had over paying a $100 bill for a farm equipment crash at Terra California Garden, formerly called Mountain Mushrooms. About a half hour before the shooting, sources say, Zhao complained to a supervising co-worker that he was not to blame for the earlier accident. Sources said Zhao claimed his co-worker intentionally ran into him with a bulldozer while Zhao was driving a forklift.
After insisting that Zhao still had to pay, according to sources familiar with Zhao’s account, the supervisor rode off on a bicycle.
Zhao told investigators he followed and caught up with the supervisor outside a greenhouse, talking with the co-worker Zhao blamed for the accident. After confronting the boss again, who maintained Zhao had to pay the $100 bill, Zhao told investigators he walked away but waited nearby inside a greenhouse. It was then, sources say, he allegedly shot the co-worker from the accident and then the supervisor.
Our sources say Zhao told investigators he returned to a trailer encampment and went to the co-worker’s trailer, and targeted his wife, saying: “I killed your husband, you should join him too.” Sources said Zhao then went to another trailer, shooting one co-worker as he slept and wounding the victim’s brother.
Zhao left the scene, sources say, driving to a nearby mushroom farm on Highway 1, Concord Farms, where he had worked five years before. There, he allegedly shot and killed the assistant manager – who Zhao claimed had mistreated him -- as well as a San Francisco couple he had worked with there.
Our sources say Zhao told investigators he then drove to the Half Moon Bay sheriff’s substation, where he waited in the parking lot about two hours, to get arrested. Authorities found the gun, ammo and a goodbye note he had written to his wife, telling her to take care of their 40-year-old daughter living in China.
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