Half Moon Bay shooting suspect once tried to choke co-worker, court documents say

On the morning of March 12, Zhao snuck into Wang’s room in their apartment on Greendale Way in San Jose and demanded his salary, Wang wrote. Wang told him to pick up his checks at the restaurant since he didn’t have any.

The records do not say whether Wang was Zhao’s manager or why Zhao would ask Wang for his salary.

“Mr. Zhao told me, I will kill you today,” Wang wrote. “Then he took a pillow and started covering my face and suffocating me… Although I couldn’t breathe, I used all my strength in within a few seconds to push him away with my blanket.’

After freeing himself, Wang said he called for help. He said another roommate tried to help him, but Zhao locked the door to the room to prevent others from entering.

The couple began struggling on his bed, with Zhao grabbing his blanket during the struggle, Wang said. He finally convinced Zhao to talk peacefully and they stopped fighting. The two talked about getting Zhao back to work, but Wang told him he “didn’t control that because Zhao left,” Wang wrote.

Two days later, on the night of March 14, Wang returned from work and went to the kitchen of his apartment to get water when Zhao confronted him, he wrote in the request for a restraining order. He wanted to go back to work, he told Wang again.

“If that can’t be done, it’s going to be a bigger problem that won’t be good/pleasant for everyone. This seemed like a threat to me and the restaurant I work at,” Wang wrote. Zhao told Wang not to be a victim and to leave him no choice, he wrote.

“Mr. Zhao said he would use a kitchen knife to split my head open,” Wang said.

In his plea, he summed up the week of threats and violence: “He made threats to make my life difficult at work and threatened to kill me if I didn’t give him my job back.”

When asked if Zhao owned any firearms, Wang checked a box indicating that he did not know. In California, people with a restraining order — even a temporary one — must surrender their guns within 24 hours. He also pointed out that the police were not called to respond to any of the incidents.

A series of judges extended the temporary restraining order — which forced Zhao to stay 300 yards outside the apartment and 3 yards inside the block — until July 2013. At that time, a judge rejected Wang’s attempt to extend it again and let it expire.

The son of a man who ran a now-closed Cupertino restaurant with partners told The Chronicle that Zhao worked for the business for about six months a dozen years ago. Zhao was let go, the employer’s son said he learned after a colleague accused Zhao of trying to strangle him over a money dispute. The son saw Jao around Cupertino in the following years.

The son requested anonymity and The Chronicle is not identifying him by name
anonymous sources policy.

Yoyo Duan, a supervisor at a Chinese bank in Cupertino near the restaurant where Zhao worked, said Zhao and his wife have been coming once a month for the past five years to send remittances to China. Duane last saw them a month ago.

“He was pretty nice,” Duane said. “First of all, I was really shocked by this news. I didn’t think he would do these things.

Duane said she once helped them translate a simple insurance letter because they spoke limited English.

At a news conference Tuesday, investigators said Zhao used a legally purchased semi-automatic handgun to shoot seven men and one woman, believed to be co-workers. They said his rampage began at California’s Terra Garden, formerly known as Mountain Mushroom Farm, where he worked shortly after 2pm on Monday.

He allegedly entered the business in the 12700 block of Highway 92, also known as San Mateo Road, and opened fire, leaving four people dead and one with life-threatening injuries. Zhao continued to a second facility in the 2100 block of Highway 1, or Cabrillo Freeway South, killing three people, officials said.

He then allegedly drove to the Half Moon Bay County Sheriff’s Substation, where officers arrested him after spotting him in his car in the parking lot.

As of Tuesday morning, the injured farm worker who survived was stabilized after being released from surgery, San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus said.

Corpus said the medical examiner is still working to identify the victims and notify next of kin, which is a challenge given that some of the victims are migrants. A sheriff’s department spokesman, Eamon Allen, declined to say whether specific individuals were targeted.

“All the evidence we have points to this being a workplace violence incident,” Corpus said. Officials did not release further details about a potential motive, but Allen said there were no “specific indicators” that would hint at Zhao’s ability to carry out a mass shooting.

Xuizhong Li ran the mushroom farm until he sold it a few years ago. Li told The Chronicle that Zhao worked for him for 14 or 15 months, starting in December 2016 or January 2017.

Li, speaking in Mandarin to a Chronicle reporter, said he remembered Zhao as a small-minded person who liked to gain an advantage, often at the expense of others.

“If you give him a little more edge, he’ll be really happy and good to you. If he feels disadvantaged, he will harbor grievances against you and ignore you,” Li said.

Zhao will report to Li that other workers are not working hard enough, Li said.

“He said he cares about the company, so he will report these things to me,” Li said. “These workers were actually quite diligent.”

San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Claire Hao contributed to this report.

Matthias Gaffney, Hannah Hagemann and Mallory Moench are San Francisco Chronicle contributors. Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Twitter: @mgafni @hannah_hagemann @mallorymoench