California shooter’s wife found dead

RANCHO TEHAMA RESERVE, Calif. — The wife of a gunman who went on a shooting rampage in a Northern California town was found dead inside the couple’s home, authorities announced Wednesday, raising the death toll from the attack to five.

Investigators discovered the body of Kevin Janson Neal’s wife hidden under the floor with several gunshot wounds. They believe her slaying was the start of the rampage, said Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston.

Authorities believe that Neal’s wife was killed Monday, Johnston said. “We are confident that he murdered her,” he said.

Neal, 44, then shot two of his neighbors in an apparent act of revenge before he went looking for random victims, ultimately killing a total of five people, all adults, and wounding 10 people at different locations that included the community’s elementary school, authorities said. Police later shot and killed him.

At the time of the attack, Neal was out of custody on bail after being charged in January with stabbing one of the neighbors he killed in this week’s rampage.

Neighbors had complained about him firing hundreds of rounds from his house, and the assistant sheriff acknowledged that officers had visited the home on several occasions.

“Every time we responded, we would try to make contact with Mr. Neal,” Johnston said. “He was not law enforcement-friendly. He would not come to the door. His house was arranged in a manner where we couldn’t detect him being there.”

“We can’t anticipate what people are going to do. We don’t have a crystal ball,” Johnston said.

After the January stabbing, a judge barred Neal from having guns, according to court records.

The records also show that Neal was charged Jan. 31 with illegally firing a weapon and possessing an illegal assault-style rifle.

He was charged with five felonies and two misdemeanors. As part of the protective order that barred him from “owning, possessing, purchasing or attempting to purchase firearms,” Neal was ordered to stay away from the two female neighbors he had threatened.

The neighbor he was accused of stabbing obtained a restraining order against him in February, writing to the court that Neal fired guns to scare people in her house and alleging that he was “very unpredictable and unstable” and that he had “anger issues,” according to court documents.

The gunman’s sister, Sheridan Orr, said her brother had struggled with mental illness throughout his life and at times had a violent temper. She said Neal had “no business” owning firearms.

At Wednesday’s news conference, Johnston initially said Neal “was not prohibited from owning firearms” but later acknowledged the protective order against him.

Records show Neal certified that he had surrendered his weapons in February, but Johnston said Wednesday that authorities had recovered two assault-style rifles and two handguns registered to someone else.

Neal’s mother said her son, who was a marijuana grower, was in a long-running dispute with neighbors he believed were cooking methamphetamine.

The mother, who spoke on condition that she be named only as Anne because she fears for her safety, lives in Raleigh, N.C., where she raised Neal. She said she posted his $160,000 bail and spent $10,000 on a lawyer after his arrest in the stabbing. Neal’s mother said the neighbor was slightly cut after Neal grabbed a steak knife out of the hand of the neighbor who was threatening him with it.

She wept as she said she had spoken to Neal on the phone Monday.

“Mom, it’s all over now,” she said he told her. “I have done everything I could do, and I am fighting against everyone who lives in this area.”

She said Neal apologized to her during their brief conversation, which she thought was for all the money she had spent on him, and said he was “on a cliff” and that the people around him were trying to “execute” him.

Asked about Neal’s motive, Johnston responded: “Madman on the loose. The case is remarkably clear. We will move forward and we will start the healing process.”

Cristal Caravez and her father live across a ravine from the roadway where the gunman and his first victims lived.

She said they and others heard frequent gunfire from the area of the gunman’s house but couldn’t say for sure whether it was him firing.

“You could hear the yelling. He’d go off the hinges,” she said. The shooting “would be during the day, during the night, I mean, it didn’t matter.”

She and her father, who is president of the community’s homeowners’ association, said neighbors would complain to the sheriff’s office, which referred the complaints back to the homeowners’ association.

“The sheriff wouldn’t do anything about it,” Juan Caravez said.

Police said surveillance video shows the shooter unsuccessfully trying to enter a nearby elementary school after staff members quickly locked the outside doors and barricaded themselves inside when they heard gunshots.

Johnston said the gunman spent about six minutes shooting into Rancho Tehama Elementary School before driving off to continue shooting elsewhere. Johnston said one student was shot but was expected to survive.

He said the rampage ended when a patrol car rammed the stolen vehicle the shooter was driving and killed him in a shootout.

The rampage lasted about 25 minutes, Johnston said, correcting an earlier estimate that it went on for 45 minutes.

Witnesses reported hearing gunshots and children screaming at the school, which has one class of students from kindergarten through fifth grade.

Rancho Tehama Reserve is in a sparsely populated area of rolling woodlands dotted with grazing cattle about 130 miles north of Sacramento.