The Butte County Sheriff’s Office in northern California said they had identified the man who shot and killed two kindergarteners at a religious elementary school on Wednesday afternoon. The man then killed himself with the gun.
When they met with the reporters late Thursday afternoon, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office gave them more information about the shooting. According to Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea, the shooter was 56-year-old Glenn Litton. He has a “lengthy criminal history” for forgery and identity theft and has had mental health problems in the past.
The victims were six-year-old Roman Mendez, who was shot twice, and five-year-old Elias Wilford, who was shot in the belly. Honea said that the kids who were hurt will have a long time to heal and will probably need more than one surgery. He also said that the fact that they were alive was a “miracle.”
“The victims are the ones who matter in this investigation.” “I don’t want them to get lost in the story,” Honea said.
A GoFundMe page was set up to help pay for the kids’ hospital bills. It had raised $300 of the $10,000 goal.
At about 1 p.m., Litton started fire on the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists, which is just outside of Oroville, a city of 20,000 people in the far north of the state. Honea said that when a California Highway Patrol officer got to the scene minutes later, he saw a man dead from what looked like a gunshot wound he had given himself.
Every deputy in the county who was available was sent by the sheriff’s office to the scene of the killing. Honea said the first CHP officer sent to the school got there 90 seconds after the first 911 call.
Investigators have found that Litton had a meeting with an administrator to talk about enrolling a family member at the private school in Palermo, a small town in Butte County. The school has about 35 kids from kindergarten to eighth grade.
He was dropped off at campus by an Uber driver, who is being questioned by police. Honea said Litton’s meeting with school staff was “cordial.”
He said, “There wasn’t anything about the meeting that made the administrator nervous.”
A sixth-grader named Jocelyn Orlando told CBS News Sacramento that the shooting happened as the kids were walking back to class after lunch.
“As we were leaving for lunch break, almost everyone in my class heard gunshots and most of them were screaming,” she said. “Everyone went into the office, shut the doors and curtains, and did what you would do in a school shooting. Then a teacher came in, and we all ran into the gym.”
Honea said it looks like Litton killed himself after the shooting. A gun was found close to his body, which was near the school yard slide and other play equipment.
Police think the shooter had nothing to do with the students or the school. They are still trying to figure out what he was trying to do, but they think he may have picked the school because it is connected to the Seventh-Day Adventist church. Honea said that investigators are trying to piece together what Litton did before the killing and are trying to get in touch with his family before letting the public know who he is.
Last month, Litton was accused of not returning a rented car. He was quickly arrested by police in San Francisco. He was caught with a fake driver’s license that had the same name on it as the one he used to make an appointment at the school.
He told the school that he wanted to educate his grandson.
Honea said, “It looks like the story was just a trick to get him an appointment that would let him into the campus.”
There was video of Litton going around campus with his hand in his jacket, and then he pulled out a gun.
As a child, Litton went to an Adventist school in the nearby town of Paradise. Officials have a statement that they think is from Litton in which he says he is part of an international group and that he took the “counter-measure” because the US was “involved with genocide and oppression of Palestinians along with attacks against Yemen.”
However, investigators working with the Department of Homeland Security think the shooting was an isolated event that brought to light Litton’s past of mental health problems. Honea said it looks like he also thought about going after a Seventh-Day Adventist school in a nearby town.
Mostly dangerous wildfires, like the Camp fire in 2018 that killed 85 people and the North Complex fire, have happened a lot in Butte County in the past few years. A 43-year-old woman traveling with her two children was killed when a man opened fire on a Greyhound bus in 2022. Four other people, including a pregnant woman, were hurt.
It’s happened again in Butte County, and this time it’s a big tragedy, Honea said. In the past three years, this town has been through a lot. It’s hard to believe we’re back here again.
