Two kindergarteners were seriously wounded in a shooting at a small Christian grammar school in Northern California on Wednesday, authorities said.
After entering the school and opening fire on the students, the suspected gunman died from what is believed by officials to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Two boys, ages 5 and 6, were promptly taken to a hospital and were in “extremely critical condition” as of Wednesday evening, according to Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea.
Authorities in Butte County responded to 911 calls for reports of an active shooter at the Feather River Adventist School just outside of Oroville, California, shortly after 1 p.m. local time, Honea told reporters. A trooper with the California Highway Patrol was the first to arrive on the scene and found the two wounded students and the suspect’s body with a handgun nearby.
The sheriff said the suspected shooter had met with a school administrator earlier in the day to discuss enrolling a student at the school, which teaches kindergarten to 8th grade and has a total of 35 students, according to Honea.
It’s unclear if the meeting was legitimate or a ruse for the suspected gunman to get inside, the sheriff said.
The meeting was described as “cordial” and did not set off any alarm bells with the school administrator, the sheriff said.
A few minutes after that meeting, the shots rang out, he explained.
The sheriff told reporters that authorities have identified the shooter and said that he may have targeted the school because of its affiliation with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we sent an alert out to law enforcement agencies throughout the state of California, advising them of this shooting and advising them that the subject may have targeted this school because of its affiliation with that particular religious organization,” Honea said.
“Our request of those law enforcement agencies was to be vigilant and make sure that those schools are safe and the students are still safe,” he added.
The sheriff said authorities are not ready to publicly release the suspect’s identity.
The suspect was dropped off at the school by an Uber driver who had been located in the aftermath of the shooting and undergone interviews with police.
Otherwise, authorities are still looking to piece together a timeline of his whereabouts leading up to the shooting.
“We’re working to essentially reconstruct this individual’s activities over the course of today as well as into the past to determine why … he did the things that he did,” Honea said.
The sheriff’s office is leading the investigation into the shooting. The FBI is helping to process the crime scene and also to dig into the suspect’s background.
Butte County is located about 65 miles north of Sacramento.
