California shooter kills 4, wounds 10
Gunman shot randomly in 7 locations, including an elementary school
RANCHO TEHAMA RESERVE, Calif. – An apparent felon who had been shooting hundreds of rounds in recent days in a small community in Northern California began firing at random Tuesday, killing at least four people and wounding 10.
The gunman shot at people and property in seven locations, said Undersheriff Phil Johnston of the Tehama County Sheriff ’s Office. He called the incident a “bizarre and murderous rampage.”
Officials at Rancho Tehama Elementary School heard gunfire and immediately locked down the facility, Johnston said.
He said it was “monumental” that school workers took the action they did, and he had no doubt they saved children’s lives.
The incident comes a week after a shooting spree at a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church left 25 people dead, including a pregnant woman whose unborn baby also died, and a little over a month after 58 people were killed in a massacre at a Las Vegas music festival.
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, Johnston said.
Members of the Rancho Tehama Reserve subdivision identified the gunman as Kevin Janson Neal, 43. Officials released no motive for the rampage. The man was involved in a domestic violence incident Monday and had been involved a few months earlier in a stab- bing.
Two children were among the wounded Tuesday.
One of the children was shot at the school and taken to a hospital, and a second child was in a car with his mother. The child in the car was not seriously wounded, but his mother’s injuries were life-threatening, Johnston said.
Deputies escorted a busload of students from the school, which houses about 100 kindergarteners to fifth-grad- ers, 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 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 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.”