Staff prevented school massacre: assistant sheriff

RANCHO TEHAMA RESERVE, California — A school secretary at a tiny elementary school rushed out to shoo children inside. A custodian swooped in, telling kids in the play yard to “get into the classrooms.”

Inside Rancho Tehama Elementary School, children and some parents huddled under desks as bullets riddled the tan and teal portable classrooms.

“I didn’t know what was happening and this boy was like, ‘Get down, get down!’ He did not want some people to get hurt,” sixyear-old Aileen Favela recalled Wednesday.

She was in her class with about 15 first- and second-graders when shots came through the window Tuesday during the shooting rampage by 44-year-old Kevin Neal. Favela ducked under her desk as she heard shots.

Randy Morehouse, the district’s maintenance and operations head, said Neal “tried and tried and tried and tried to get into the kindergarten door,” but it was locked.

Neal then went to the back side of the cafeteria and reloaded, Morehouse said. He came onto the playground and shot at a passing car before running back to his vehicle and driving off.

Authorities credited the quick action of school personnel, who jumped into lockdown mode, for saving dozens of students at the school with a student population of 100 students, 215 kilometres north of Sacramento.

“I really, truly believe we would have had a horrific bloodbath at that school if that school hadn’t taken the action that it did,” assistant Tehama county sheriff Phil Johnston said.

Corning Union Elementary School District Superintendent Richard Fitzpatrick said there were many heroics during Tuesday’s incident, starting with the school secretary quickly recognizing the threat.

He said it “made all the difference between 100 kids being around today and dozens being shot or killed.” One student was injured.

Neal shot and killed five people and wounded at least eight others at different locations around the rural community of Rancho Tehama Reserve. Police later shot and killed him.

Police defended their decision not to arrest Neal for previously violating a court order prohibiting him from having guns.

At a tense news conference, Johnston conceded that neighbours had repeatedly complained about Neal firing hundreds of rounds from his house among other erratic and violent behaviour.