USA TODAY International Edition
Gunman kills 4, wounds 10, in Northern California
Neighbors said living near suspect was ‘hell’
RANCHO TEHAMA RESERVE, Calif. – An apparent felon who had been shooting hundreds of rounds of bullets in recent days in a small community in Northern California began firing at random Tuesday, killing at least four people and wounding 10 others.
The gunman shot randomly at people and property in seven locations, said Undersheriff Phil Johnston of the Tehama County Sheriff’s Office. Shortly before 8 a.m., the shooter stole a pickup, went on a shooting rampage, crashed the truck, stole a second vehicle and continued shooting until deputies found him dead inside a car.
The sheriff ’s office has not released the shooter’s name nor his motive. The man was involved in a domestic violence incident Monday and had been involved a few months earlier in a stabbing, officials said.
The incident comes a week after a shooting spree at a Sutherland Spring, Texas, church left 25 people dead, including a pregnant woman whose unborn baby also died, and a little over a month after 58 people died in a massacre at a Las Vegas country music festival.
Two children were among the wounded Tuesday.
One of the children was shot at Rancho Tehama Elementary School and taken to a hospital, and a second child was in a car with his mother. The wound of the child in the car was not serious, but his mother’s injuries are life-threatening, Johnston said.
Deputies escorted a busload of students from the school, which houses about 100 kindergarteners to fifthgraders, to a safer location, the Rancho Tehama Association community building less than a mile away. No students or staff were killed, said Superintendent Rich DuVarney of the county education department.
Brian Flint said he got a call in the morning that his roommate was injured and that his truck had been stolen. It turned out his neighbor was the gunman.
“The crazy thing is that the neighbor has been shooting a lot of bullets lately, hundreds of rounds, large magazines,” Flint said. “We made it aware that this guy is crazy, and he’s been threatening us.” Living near the gunman was “hell,” Flint said, and the man was a known felon who often harassed Flint and his neighbors.
The shooter had a semiautomatic rifle and two handguns, Johnston said.
Joseph Raven was doing tile work with a co-worker at a Rancho Tehama home when the shooting started.
“We heard the bullets fly right next to our ears,” Raven said. “There were screams: a female screaming, a male screaming. There were helicopters all over the place.”
The FBI is sending some teams to assist Tehama County investigators, said Jason Wandel, chief division counsel at the FBI’s Sacramento field office.
State Sen. Jim Nielsen, a Republican from Gerber, Calif., whose district includes Rancho Tehama, called the incident “senseless violence.” Vice President Pence also offered condolences.