The lone survivor of a mass capturing at a northern California mushroom farm is suing the farm’s proprietor for negligence within the assault that spanned two areas and left seven folks lifeless and one particular person, Pedro Felix Romero Perez, injured.
Perez, 24, was shot 5 instances, and his older brother Jose Romero Perez was killed within the 23 January 2023 capturing at California Terra Backyard and Harmony Farms in Half Moon Bay, a coastal neighborhood about 30 miles south of San Francisco. He’s suing California Terra Backyard and its proprietor, Xianmin Guan, for compensation for the bodily and emotional trauma he’s dealing with and for the monetary losses he’s incurring as a result of he can’t work.
One other lawsuit has been filed by the identical regulation workplace in opposition to the identical events on behalf of Jose Romero Perez’s spouse, Marciana Rodriguez Roque, for the wrongful dying of her husband, with whom she shared 4 kids.
“We’re making an attempt to shine a light-weight on the best way these frameworks are handled,” Duffy Magilligan, one of many attorneys representing Perez and Roque stated.
“They do backbreaking, grueling farming work within the parts so that you and I can have meals,” he continued. “And in alternate for that, these landowners deal with them like they’re animals, making them reside within the delivery containers.”
Magilligan and his fellow attorneys are requesting a jury trial however gained’t know whether or not one might be granted for at the least one other 12 months.
The fits, filed in San Mateo county’s superior courtroom on 3 April, allege that the farm’s proprietor didn’t take steps to guard their workers from “fairly foreseeable” violence.
Legislation enforcement was referred to as to the capturing round 2pm on the afternoon of 23 January 2023. Upon arriving, they discovered 4 folks lifeless and Perez wounded on the farm. Three miles away, at Harmony Farms, they discovered three extra folks lifeless.
This capturing got here two days after 11 folks have been shot and killed in a ballroom dance studio in Monterey Park, a small metropolis simply exterior Los Angeles. The reporting that adopted the Half Moon Bay capturing additionally illuminated the substandard and dangerous company-owned residing situations that employees just like the Perez brothers have been in. Pedro lived in a delivery container with no insulation or operating water, as did a number of of his friends, in keeping with the lawsuit.
After the capturing, San Mateo county supervisor Ray Mueller inspected the premises and directed the county to red-tag each residing unit, to point that it was uninhabitable, in keeping with ABC 7 Information.
“California Terra Backyard, Inc. is a farm in Half Moon Bay that grows mushrooms at the hours of darkness. The darkness permits the fungus to thrive. It additionally conceals the deplorable residing situations that [the defendant] supplied to farmworkers residing and dealing on the San Mateo County Coast,” the lawsuit reads.
The capturing that injured Perez was not the primary gun incident on the farm. In July 2022, almost seven months earlier than the mass capturing, Martin Medina, a supervisor at California Terra Backyard, tried to interrupt into an worker’s trailer and threatened to kill them and their household. Medina allegedly fired a single shot from the handgun into the trailer. The shot didn’t hit anybody however travelled by the trailer and into one other trailer that belonged to Yetao Bing, one of many folks killed within the January 2023 capturing, in keeping with the lawsuit.
Regardless of this occasion, and alleged shooter Chunli Zhao being positioned beneath a restraining order for threatening to kill his roommate in 2013, attorneys for the plaintiffs say proprietor Guan failed to contemplate the menace Zhao posed and to plan for the potential of violence.
After the capturing, the California Division of Occupational Well being and Security (Cal/Osha) investigated California Terra Backyard and Harmony Farms and cited them for 22 violations together with failing to determine active-shooter protocols.
“We demand extra from landlords,” Magilligan stated of the message he hopes Perez and Roque’s lawsuit will ship. “We demand extra from these companies and we don’t wish to allow them to reap the benefits of this weak communities of migrant farmworkers.”
Attorneys for Guan and California Terra Backyard haven’t responded to the lawsuit, however have 30 days to take action.
