Officials decline to disclose name of gunman who wounded children at Oroville religious school before killing himself
Officials in northern California have identified the man who shot two kindergarteners at a religious elementary school on Wednesday afternoon before turning the gun on himself, the Butte county sheriff’s office said.
The man, whose identity officials have not yet released, shot a five-year-old and a six-year-old at the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists just outside Oroville, a city of 20,000 people in the state’s far north, at about 1pm. A California highway patrol officer who arrived on the scene minutes later found a man dead of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Kory Honea, the Butte county sheriff, told reporters.
The boys were severely injured and are in critical but stable condition, the sheriff’s office said on Thursday morning.
The sheriff’s office is still in the early stages of its investigation, Honea said, and is being aided by the FBI.
Investigators have determined the suspect had an appointment with an administrator to discuss enrolling a family member at the private school, which serves about 35 students ranging from kindergarten to eighth grade in the small Butte county community of Palermo.
