A man who shot and injured two kindergarteners at a private religious school in Butte County on Wednesday was identified by law enforcement as 56-year-old Glenn Litton.
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said Litton suffered from mental illness and had a lengthy — though not violent — criminal record. He added that Litton was born in Chico and was homeless, moving back and forth between Chico and Sacramento.
The sheriff said Litton may have targeted the Feather River School of Seventh Day Adventists near Oroville based on its religious affiliation.
He gained access to the school on Wednesday after meeting with its principal. He called several days earlier and made an appointment using the pseudonym Michael Sanders, Honea said.
“His story was that his daughter had recently moved to Gridley and that he wanted his grandson to go to that school and he was willing to pay the tuition,” the sheriff said. “As it turns out, that was all a lie, his daughter had not moved to Gridley and he did not have a grandson.”
After leaving the principal’s office, Litton opened fire on school grounds before shooting and killing himself.
Sheriff's deputies walks past a playground outside Feather River Adventist School after a shooting Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024, in Oroville, Calif.AP Photo/Terry Chea
Litton shot and injured two kindergarteners: 5-year-old Elias Wolford and 6-year-old Roman Mendez, both of whom are in “critical but stable” condition at a hospital in Sacramento. A verified GoFundMe for Wolford organized by his grandparents said he “was airlifted to the hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery to stop the bleeding. He is currently sedated and on a ventilator in PICU, awaiting additional surgery.”
“The fact that they are currently still with us is a miracle,” Honea said, but added that they face surgeries and “a very long road ahead of them.”
The sheriff said investigators found writings from Litton which led them to believe the school was targeted. The sheriff said, Litton wrote about taking “counter-measures” against the school in response to America’s involvement in violence in the Middle East.
“That’s a motivation that was in his mind. How it was that he conflated what’s going on in Palestine and Yemen with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, I can’t speculate. I’m not sure that we’ll ever know that,” Honea said.
In recent years, Litton searched online for guns and explosives and wrote notes to himself to plan a non-specific mass incident, Butte County District Attorney Michael L. Ramsey said.
When he was a child, Litton attended a school of Seventh Day Adventists in Paradise, which is also in Butte County. He also may have had a relative attend the school near Oroville years ago, investigators said.
A person walks outside of Feather River Adventist School after a shooting Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024, in Oroville, Calif.AP Photo/Terry Chea
Laurie Trujillo, a spokesperson for the Northern California Conference of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, said in a statement that the church community was “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.
A candlelight vigil was scheduled for Friday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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