Survivor of Half Moon Bay mass shooting files suit

The law firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy has filed two suits against the embattled mushroom farm, which has been lambasted for squalid, inhumane living conditions for employees — brought to light after the shooting. One lawsuit is filed on behalf of Pedro Perez and another on behalf of the family of his brother, Jose Romero Perez, who was killed in the shooting.

“I came here for a better life, to help my family. They told me there were jobs here,” Pedro Perez said in Spanish through an interpreter. “I moved here and was working with my brother, and we never expected that this was ever going to happen.”

Pedro Romero Perez and his brother were nearly inseparable, he said, often cooking and shopping together.

Now, the civil lawsuit is seeking an indeterminate amount of compensation both for Pedro — who is still healing both emotionally as well as physically from five gunshot wounds to the stomach, face, arm and back — as well as for Jose Romero Perez’s wife and four children in Oaxaca, Mexico.

“In California, landlords — all landlords — have a duty to protect their tenants from the criminal acts of people who come on to the property. And California Terra Gardens did nothing to protect Pedro, or his brother, or the other victims,” Duffy Magilligan of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy said.

The lawsuits point to a prior shooting at the farm in July 2022 as well as the previously violent behavior of the alleged shooter, Chunli Zhao, who was issued a restraining order in 2013 after he allegedly threatened and attempted to kill his then-roommate.

Additionally, employees of the farm, including the Perez brothers, were living in substandard and dangerous housing in units “converted from shipping containers,” with no running water or indoor bathrooms, the lawsuit said.

Joe Cotchett, an attorney for Pedro and the Perez family, said that after the law firm started looking into the case, investigators found similar instances of substandard housing for farmworkers from Kern to Solano County.

“It’s the same situation all over the state. These so-called containers, if you want to call them that, they are basically hidden. No one pays any attention to the farmworkers,” he said.

California Terra Gardens was cited for 22 health and safety violations that occurred prior to, and during, a five-month investigation by the California Department of Industrial Relations, including failing to put proper precautions in place in the case of an active shooter, the lawsuit said.

Cotchett said that California Terra Gardens was culpable for Zhao’s actions by cultivating unhealthy living conditions and pointed to the situation right before the shooting, where one of Zhao’s alleged bullies told him he was responsible for $100 worth of damage to a forklift.

But the lawsuit is trying to raise awareness and ask for accountability on a larger issue, Cotchett said.

“When you find out the facts what caused him to do the shooting, what caused him to do the shooting was the environment he was living in,” he said. “They went after the shooter, as you all know, claiming he owed $100, and they drove the man to what he did. But that’s an isolated situation. It’s the bigger, bigger picture.”

That bigger picture revolves around farmworker rights to livable housing conditions and fair wages for their labor, Dr. Belinda Hernandez-Arriaga, founder and executive director of Ayudando Latinos a Soñar, said. ALAS, a Latino cultural arts and programming organization, was deemed an essential service provider in the weeks and months following the shooting, working closely with those impacted.

“Every day we have to get out and fight for the rights of farmworkers. Even as we speak, in Silicon Valley, where wealth runs very deep, yet, we have our farmworkers — who are producing the vegetables that you might eat — not having the rights, not having the equity living in this situation and needing more support,” she said.

Since the shooting, the city of Half Moon Bay, San Mateo County and legislative representatives have mobilized to secure funding for affordable farmworker housing, an effort Hernandez-Arriaga said was appreciated by community organizers.

Two substantial affordable housing projects — one at 880 Stone Pine Road and another at 555 Kelly Ave. — are currently underway, with the county facilitating a third purchase of Bay City Flower Company, also designated for housing. Earliest move-in dates for some housing units are predicted by next fall, although all three projects will require more funding to move forward with on-schedule development.

Veronica Rodriguez, a founding board member at ALAS, said that Half Moon Bay never expected to deal with the trauma of a mass shooting, but the existing challenges that farmworkers face have been a pervasive and ongoing crisis along the coast.

“We never thought we were going to be advocates for this type of terror in our little hometown, but you are now being exposed to the realities of everything we live with on a daily basis,” she said. “Our farmworkers and essential workers. They really deserve to live with dignity.”

And the repercussions of the shooting continue to be felt in the Half Moon Bay community, including for individuals like Pedro Romero Perez, who is no longer able to work and hopes to return to Mexico in the future.

“That’s what I came here for, to be able to send money to [my family], and now I’m not working and now because I’m not working, I’m not able to support them,” he said. “My family understands what I’m going through.”

The lawsuit currently only represents Pedro Romero Perez and the Perez family, lawyers said, although Cotchett acknowledged that questions regarding further development into a class-action lawsuit were “right on the money.”