‘It's a difficult day': Half Moon Bay marks 3 years since deadly mass shooting

• By Robert Handa

• PUBLISHED: Jan 23, 2026

Friday marked three years since a farmworker opened fire at two farms in Half Moon Bay, killing seven people. Robert Handa reports.

Friday marked three years since a farmworker opened fire at two farms in Half Moon Bay, killing seven people.

Pedro Perez, a farmworker who was wounded but survived the shooting, said, through a translator, that he still grieves for his brother who was killed.

“It’s a difficult day," Perez said. "It’s been three years since my brother was here. But now, it's three years without him. But thank God we as a community are going forward. We all feel a little better now."

The mass shooting also revealed troubling details about farmworker living conditions.

At the request of the community, the city allows the nonprofit Latino group ALAS to coordinate the anniversary events. ALAS members said they will honor and remember the victims and their families but will also focus on how the shooting helped force changes.

"Definitely changed the trajectory, right?" ALAS Program Director Sandra Sencion said. "Of things that were to come, of the families obviously that lost a loved one, as a community thinking about safety and what that looks like. Housing, in the housing aspect as well, to be able to offer housing for everybody, right? I think that was one of the biggest things that have come out."

San Mateo County Supervisor Ray Mueller agreed, pointing out how, in the wake of the shooting, a county task force inspected every farm in the county and made sure housing conditions improved.

"While all that was going on we also realized that we needed to add housing, and so we went about building housing," Mueller said. "We have projects that we’ve already completed where farmworkers can move into them. There’s still projects on the books that are still being moved forward."

But Mueller said they have also lost ground recently.

"Having done all of this work now, we have a federal government that is scaring them into the shadows," he said.

Meanwhile, shooting suspect Chunli Zhao still awaits trial.