Pedro Felix Romero Perez and Jose Romero Perez had just finished their shifts at the California Terra Garden mushroom farm and were settling down in their shared trailer to rest when one of their coworkers burst through the door and shot them both, killing Jose and severely wounding Pedro.
Now, Pedro and the family of Jose are suing the owner of the mushroom farm where they lived and work, Xianmin Guan, alleging that he failed to adequately respond to previous violent incidents and take steps that could have prevented the shooting.
Pedro and Jose were the first shot when Chunli Zhao carried out his rampage on Jan. 23, 2023. Police say Zhao killed four farmworkers at that farm, then drove three miles south to his previous employer, Concord Farms, where he shot and killed three more, following a dispute with his supervisor over a $100 repair bill for a forklift. The shooting was the deadliest in San Mateo County’s history.
Zhao, 67, was charged with seven courts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held in a Redwood City jail.
The lawsuit, brought by Cotchett, Pitre and McCarthy, LLP, alleges the farm “could have prevented this tragedy,” but that they “failed to adequately secure their premises against reasonably foreseeable criminal acts.”
California Terra Garden did not immediate respond to a request for comment.
Beyond detailing the “deplorable” living conditions at California Terra — where farmworkers slept in trailers with plywood floors and heated food on makeshift wood-burning stoves — the lawsuit also alleges that Guan took no action to secure the farm, despite knowing of Zhao’s violent history, as well as a shooting at the farm just a few months earlier.
Trailers are seen from this drone view at California Terra Gardens in Half Moon Bay, Calif., on Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
In July 2022, the farm’s former manager, Martin Medina, was accused of breaking into a farmworker’s trailer, threatening to kill the man and his family. Medina fired a shot from a handgun that went through the trailer and into an occupied one nearby, but no injuries were reported.
In 2013, a one-time roommate of Zhao’s at a home in San Jose filed a civil-harassment restraining order against him after alleging that Zhao tried to smother him to death with a pillow and threatened to use a knife to “split” open his head, court records show.
Guan “had the means and ability to protect Jose and others from Medina and other violent criminals that came onto the farm, including Chunli Zhao,” the lawsuit alleges.
The suits were filed in San Mateo County on Wednesday and seeks unspecified damages for economic losses related to Jose’s death and Pedro’s injuries, which have required three surgeries and left him unable to work.