Rampage gunman was out on bail after stabbing

THE gunman behind a rampage in northern California which left four people dead was out on bail charged with stabbing a neighbour.

Kevin Neal used a semi-automatic rifle and two handguns on Tuesday to shoot 14 people in seven different locations across his rural community, including an elementary school, before he died in a shootout with police.

It is not yet clear what the terms of Neal’s bail were and whether he would have been allowed to possess and fire the weapons on his property at the end of a dirt road in Rancho Tehama reserve, 130 miles north of Sacramento.

Other people had complained about him firing hundreds of rounds from his house and he had been the subject of a domestic violence call the day before the attack.

His many contacts with authorities raised questions of why he was out of custody and able to go on the 45-minute rampage that began with the killing of two neighbours in an apparent act of revenge before he went looking for random victims.

Cristal Caravez and her father live across a ravine from the road where the gunman and his first victims lived. She said they and others heard constant gunfire from the area of the gunman’s house but could not say for sure it was him firing.

“You could hear the yelling. He’d go off the hinges,” she said. The gunman’s sister, Sheridan Orr, said her brother had struggled with mental illness throughout his life and at times had a violent temper.

Neal’s mother told the Associated Press her son, who was a marijuana grower, was in a dispute with neighbours he believed were cooking methamphetamine.