At 2:22 p.m., first responders received reports of a shooting at Mountain Mushroom Farm, which had recently changed ownership and been renamed California Terra Garden. They found four people dead from gunshot wounds. A fifth victim, 23-year-old Pedro Felix Romero Perez, had been shot five times -- in the hip, back, elbow, and stomach twice -- and was airlifted by helicopter to Stanford University Medical Center with life-threatening injuries. His older brother Jose was among the dead. While responders were still arriving at the first farm, the gunman drove two miles to Concord Farms, where he fatally shot three more people. Several children were present at the second scene but were left physically unharmed.

At approximately 4:40 p.m., the suspect drove to the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office substation at 557 Kelly Avenue in downtown Half Moon Bay and parked in the lot. Chunli Zhao, 66 years old and originally from China, was found sitting in his vehicle with a Glock-17 semiautomatic pistol. He was taken into custody without incident. Zhao had lived and worked at Mountain Mushroom Farm, sharing housing with 34 other employees. In a jailhouse interview, he described grievances that had accumulated over time: bullying, long hours, and a demand from his supervisor that he pay $100 for a forklift repair after a workplace collision. He expressed regret for what he had done. Five of the seven people he killed were Chinese citizens.

In the days after the shooting, reporters discovered that many workers at California Terra Garden lived in shipping containers and storage units on the farm property. The site did not meet all permit and code requirements. Some workers were paid below California's minimum wage. For undocumented workers -- and the vice mayor of Half Moon Bay acknowledged that the farming community included people not in the country legally -- seeking help from authorities carried risks that made silence seem safer than complaint. The shooting exposed a world that existed thirty miles from one of America's wealthiest cities, a world of people who harvested mushrooms and tended nursery plants for wages that could not afford the housing market that surrounded them.

Zhao was indicted on seven counts of first-degree murder on January 23, 2024, exactly one year after the shootings. District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe announced he would seek the death penalty. The case was placed under a gag order restricting all parties from publicly discussing facts or opinions. As of early 2026, the trial has been set for January 25, 2027. The memorial that appeared at the farms in early February 2023 -- flowers, candles, photographs of people whose names most Americans would never learn -- spoke to a grief that legal proceedings could acknowledge but never resolve.