A week after tragedy rocked their community, victims’ families and survivors of the deadly shooting in Half Moon Bay, California, are still in crisis mode, an advocate who visited the community told NBC News.
With seven immigrant farmworkers killed at two different farms, many laborers and their families have been left without housing or income, and an already exploitative industry now feels even more unsafe for those who face returning to work.
“This mass shooting, the gun violence issue, compounds some already pretty terrible living and working conditions,” said Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of advocacy group Chinese for Affirmative Action, who met with survivors last week. She said she spoke with community members who are still struggling to meet basic needs. “We have individuals who no longer have a place to live because they lived on the farm … Obviously, they don’t want to go back.”
Of the seven people killed last Monday, five were Chinese immigrant workers and two were Mexican immigrant workers. Zhishen Liu, 73; Qizhong Cheng, 66; Marciano Martinez Jimenez, 50; Yetao Bing, 43; Aixiang Zhang, 74; Jingzhi Lu, 64; and Jose Romero Perez, 38, were identified as the deceased by the San Mateo County Coroner’s Office late last week.
The shooter, farmworker Chunli Zhao, admitted to the killings, reportedly telling law enforcement that he went on the rampage because his boss asked him to pay $100 to repair a damaged forklift at work.
California Gov. Gavin Newson acknowledged the conditions they lived in were “deplorable,” with the farmers at California Terra Garden — the site of the first shooting — living in shipping containers and getting paid only $9 an hour, well below the state’s $15.50 minimum wage.
“In general, farmworkers, migrant populations are often invisible,” Choi said. “They experience multiple forms of harm and violence.”
NBC News tried to reach out to farmworkers and their families, but they were either unreachable…
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