Another mass shooting in California - the American curse continues

ITV News Correspondent Robert Moore reports on the latest US mass shooting after seven people were killed in two separate attacks by a 67-year-old man in California

Two massacres have now occurred in California within 48 hours. They are devastating and mysterious mass shootings - without any obvious motive or explanation.

This is a dark and deeply disturbing start to 2023 for those in the Golden State.

This latest horror took place in the coastal community of Half Moon Bay in northern California, 30 miles south of San Francisco.

At least seven people were gunned down. Some appear to have been agricultural workers at a mushroom farm; other victims were found at a second location a mile away.

Officers arrested a 67-year-old man in connection with the shooting. Video credit: Kati McHugh

Two days earlier, on Saturday night, eleven people were killed at a dance hall in Monterey Park, a suburb just east of Los Angeles. By bizarre coincidence - at least it seems that way - both attacks were carried out by elderly Asian-Americans, although there appears to be no other obvious connection.

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The first suspect was a 72-year old man, Huu Can Tran, who operated a trucking business. He died from a self-inflicted gun wound as police and SWAT teams surrounded his van. The gunman in this latest shooting in Half Moon Bay is also an Asian American, 67-year old Zhao Chunli.

He has been arrested and dramatic video of him being detained was filmed by a local ABC News camera operator. Chunli is said to be fully cooperating with investigators.

These two gunmen appear to be complete outliers in terms of their ethnicity and their age.

The previous eldest gunman perpetrating a mass shooting was Stephen Paddock, a 64-year old who killed 60 people at a music festival in Las Vegas in 2017.

Political and community leaders across America have expressed their shock at this latest mass shooting.

The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, said he learnt about the second shooting while at a hospital where he was meeting the injured from the first attack. "Tragedy upon tragedy," he wrote on Twitter.

The most startling statistic of all is that the latest US mass shooting - defined as an attack in which at least four people are shot in a single incident - is the 40th of 2023. America's curse has returned with a vengeance. In fact, it never went away. These two attacks have simply returned the epidemic of gun violence to the headlines.

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