California is suffering from one of its bloodiest spates of mass gun violence in decades. The West Coast state is reeling from its third mass shooting in eight days after a man shot dead seven former co-workers south of San Francisco.
The latest shooting came just two days after a gunman killed 11 people at a Los Angeles-area dance studio. And just over a week ago, six people including a teenage mother and baby were killed at a property in Goshen, central California.
Authorities said they had not identified the motive for either of the two latest rampages, which seemed especially baffling in part because the suspects in each were men of retirement age, much older than is typical for perpetrators of deadly mass shootings that have become numbingly routine in the U.S.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said he was visiting wounded survivors from Saturday night’s massacre in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park when he was informed of Monday’s killings in northern California.
Newsom described it as “tragedy upon tragedy”.
The latest attack, named the Half Moon Bay attack, marks the 37th mass shooting in just 24 days, according to Gun Violence Archive.
Investigators are still searching for a motive for the attack in Los Angeles prior to the one in San Francisco.
Saturday’s violence unfolded in the midst of a Chinese Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park, a hub of the Asian-American community in Southern California, giving rise initially to concerns the attack may have been racially motivated. The second day of the event was canceled.
It ranked as the deadliest mass shooting ever in Los Angeles County.
Investigators searching for a motive said the gunman was previously arrested for illegally possessing a firearm, had a rifle at home, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and appeared to be manufacturing gun silencers.
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