California religious school may have been targeted in shooting that wounded 2, authorities say

OROVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Investigators on Thursday were trying to determine if a gunman was specifically targeting a tiny religious school in Northern California when he opened fire and critically wounded two kindergartners before killing himself.
READ MORE: Shooting at Northern California school leaves 2 children wounded and gunman dead
The man may have targeted Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Palermo on Wednesday because of its religious affiliation, but he isn’t believed to have had a prior connection to the victims or the school, Butte County Sheriff Kory L. Honea said at an evening news conference. He didn’t explain further.
“Whether or not this is a hate crime or whether or not it’s part of some sort of larger scheme at this point I don’t have enough information to provide an answer to that,” he said.
The sheriff’s office said in a statement Thursday that two boys, ages 5 and 6, were in “critical but stable condition” after being shot.
“I am thankful that they’re still alive, but they’ve got a long road ahead of them,” Honea said earlier.
The suspect died at the scene, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot, authorities said. Investigators have identified the shooter and were trying to contact his family before releasing his name. A motive was unknown.
The shooting occurred shortly after 1 p.m. at the private K-8 Christian school with fewer than three dozen students in Oroville, on the edge of the tiny community of Palermo, about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of Sacramento.
Honea said the gunman was dropped off by an Uber driver who is being interviewed by detectives.
He said the shooter was in a meeting with an administrator about enrolling a child at the school, which he described as “cordial.” But it seems that was his first visit to the school and he had no prior connection to the victims. Shortly after that, shots rang out, Honea said.
The gunman’s body was found near the slide and other playground equipment on school grounds, which abut ranchland where cattle graze. A handgun was found nearby, Honea said.
The small rural school was closed Thursday but sheriff’s deputies walked around the campus behind shuttered gates in the morning and staff members carried classroom items out to their cars.
Shawn Webber, an Oroville city councilmember, said the region was reeling.
“When you see this on the news or nationally and it’s like, those things don’t happen here. Well, yesterday (Wednesday) it happened here,” he said. “It just absolutely violated the peace of our community.”
It was the the latest among dozens of school shootings around the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut, Parkland, Florida, and Uvalde, Texas. The shootings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children have grown accustomed to doing active shooter drills in their classrooms.
But school shootings have done little to move the needle on national gun laws. Firearms were the leading cause of death among children in 2020 and 2021, according to KFF, a nonprofit that researches health care issues.
Laurie Trujillo, a spokesperson for the Northern California Conference of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, said in a statement that they were “deeply saddened” by the shooting. She added that they were grateful to the sheriff’s office for acting quickly to protect the students.
The Seventh-Day Adventist Church is a Christian denomination in which members consider the Bible their only creed and believe that the second coming of Christ is near. The Feather River School has been open since 1965, according to its website.
After the shooting, authorities rushed students to a gymnasium where they stayed until a bus took them off the grounds to the Oroville Church of the Nazarene to be reunited with their families, Honea said.
Travis Marshall, the senior pastor for the Oroville Church of the Nazarene, called the reunification between parents and their children “very moving.”
“Some of the children were incredibly emotional,” he said. “One woman was raising her hands up, praising the Lord” when she found her child.
Sixth grader Jocelyn Orlando described what happened to CBS News Sacramento.
“We were going in for lunch recess and basically everybody in my classroom heard shooting and most people were screaming,” she said. “We all went into the office, we closed the curtains, locked the doors, basically did what we would do in a school shooting, and then one of the teachers came and we all ran into the gym.”
Dazio reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press journalists Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.