The search for a motive is on after 7 killed in Northern California, the state's third mass shooting in three days

Authorities are working to figure out why a 67-year-old man may have killed seven people in a small coastal city near San Francisco – the third mass shooting to stun California

in as many days and one that left’s another Asian American community reeling. Just hours after the suspect in Monday’s attacks in Half Moon Bay, Chunli Zhao, was taken

into in custody while parked at a sheriff’s substation with a semi-automatic handgun in his vehicle, someone else was killed and seven people injured in a spray of bullets along a

road in Oakland, the San Mateo sheriff and Oakland police said. Following the fatal shooting of 11 people by a 72-year-old gunman during Lunar New Year celebrations in

Monterey Park, the slaughters pushed the state’s tally of carnage to 19 dead in mass shootings in just 44 hours – and contributed to 39 mass shootings clocked so far this year in

America’s gun violence scourge. California Gov. Gavin Newsom had been at a hospital meeting victims of the Monterey Park carnage when he was “pulled away to be briefed

about another shooting – this time in Half Moon Bay,” he said. “Tragedy upon tragedy,” Newsom tweeted. “This kind of shooting is horrific,” San Mateo County Sheriff

Christina Corpus said Monday night as she detailed the shootings at two sites in the Half Moon Bay community of some 11,000. “It’s a tragedy that we hear about far too often but

today has hit home here in San Mateo County.” Investigators were working with the district attorney to interview Zhao, of Half Moon Bay, who was cooperating with

authorities after he was apprehended some two hours after gunfire was reported around 2:22 p.m., the sheriff said.