Half Moon Bay shooting suspect tried to choke co-worker, court documents claim

On the morning of March 12, Zhao broke into Wang’s room in his apartment on Greendale Way in San Jose and asked for his salary, Wang wrote. Wang told him to get his checks from the restaurant as he didn’t have any checks with him.

Records do not say whether Wang was Zhao’s manager or why Zhao would have asked Wang for his paycheck.

“Sir. Zhao told me, today I’m going to kill you,” Wang wrote. him with my blanket.”

After breaking free, Wang said he called for help. He said another roommate had tried to help him, but that Zhao had locked the bedroom door to keep others out.

The pair began wrestling on top of his bed, while Zhao grabbed his blanket during the struggle, Wang said. He finally convinced Zhao to talk peacefully and they stopped fighting. The pair talked about Zhao going back to work, but Wang told him that he “wasn’t in control of it because Zhao left,” Wang wrote.

Two days later, on the evening of March 14, Wang returned from work and went to his apartment’s kitchen to fetch water when Zhao confronted him, he wrote in the restraining order application. He wanted to go back to work, he told Wang again.

“If this is not possible, it will be a bigger problem, which will not be good/pleasant for everyone. This seemed to be a threat to me and the restaurant I work at,” Wang wrote. Zhao told Wang not to be a victim and leave him no choice, he wrote.

“Sir. Zhao said he would use a kitchen knife to split my head,” Wang said.

In his application, he summed up the week of threats and violence: “Making threats to make life difficult at work and threatening to kill me if I don’t get your job back.”

When asked if Zhao owned any firearms, Wang checked a box indicating he didn’t know. In California, people under restraining orders – even temporary ones – must turn in their guns within 24 hours. He also indicated that the police were not called to respond to any of the incidents.

A series of judges extended the temporary restraining order – which forced Zhao to stay 300 meters outside the apartment and 3 meters inside the unit – until July 2013. At that time, a judge rejected Wang’s attempt to extend it again and left it expires.

The son of a man who ran a closed Cupertino restaurant with partners told The Chronicle that Zhao worked for the business for about six months, about a dozen years ago. Zhao was fired, the employer’s son said he heard, after a co-worker accused Zhao of trying to smother him over a money dispute. The son had seen Zhao in Cupertino for years to come.

The son asked not to be identified, and The Chronicle is not naming him under its anonymous sources policy.

Yoyo Duan, a supervisor at a Chinese bank in Cupertino near the restaurant where Zhao used to work, said Zhao and his wife had come once a month for the past five years to send remittances to China. The last time Duan saw them was a month ago.

“He was very kind,” Duan said. “First, I was really shocked by this news. I didn’t think he would do those things.”

Duan said he once helped translate a simple insurance letter for them as they spoke limited English.

At a news conference on Tuesday, investigators said Zhao used a legally purchased semi-automatic weapon to shoot seven men and one woman, believed to be co-workers. They said his attack began at the California Terra Garden, formerly known as the Mountain Mushroom Farm, where he worked, shortly after 2 pm on Monday.

He allegedly walked into the business in the 12700 block of Highway 92, also known as the San Mateo Road, and opened fire, leaving four people dead and another seriously injured. Zhao continued into a second facility in the 2100 block of Highway 1, or Cabrillo Highway South, killing three people, officials said.

Afterwards, he allegedly drove to the county sheriff’s substation in Half Moon Bay, where officers arrested him after tracking him in his car in the parking lot.

As of Tuesday morning, the surviving injured farm worker had been upgraded to a stable condition after coming out of surgery, San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus said.

Corpus said the coroner was still working to identify the victims and notify next of kin, which was challenging as some of the victims were migrants. Sheriff’s department spokesman Eamonn Allen declined to release information on whether specific individuals were targeted.

“All the evidence we have points to an incident of workplace violence,” said Corpus. Authorities did not release additional details on a possible motive, but Allen said there were no “specific indicators” that would indicate Zhao’s ability to commit a mass shooting.

Xuizhong Li used to run the mushroom farm until he sold it a few years ago. Li told The Chronicle that Zhao worked for him for 14 or 15 months, starting in December 2016 or January 2017.

Li, speaking in Mandarin to a Chronicle reporter, said he remembered Zhao as a petty person who liked to gain advantage, often at the expense of others.

“If you gave him a little more leverage he would be very happy and it would be good for you. If he feels he’s been put at a disadvantage, he’ll hold grudges against you and ignore you,” Li said.

Zhao would report to Li that other workers weren’t working hard enough, Li said.

“He said he cared about the company, so he would report these things to me,” Li said. “Actually, these workers were quite diligent.”

San Francisco Chronicle Staff writer Claire Hao contributed to this report.

Matthias Gafni, Hannah Hagemann and Mallory Moench are staff writers for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com, hannah.hagemann@sfchronicle.com, mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @mgafni @hannah_hagemann @mallorymoench