OROVILLE, Calif. — Authorities said Thursday that a shooter who seriously injured two kindergarten boys at a tiny Catholic school in Northern California on Wednesday entered the campus by fabricating a narrative about enrolling a grandson before starting to shoot.
Butte County Sheriff Kory L. Honea said the suspect, Glenn Litton, 56, shot the five and six-year-old children at the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Oroville before shooting himself a few yards from the school playground. At a nearby hospital, the youngsters’ condition is still critical.
An unlicensed firearm that is challenging for authorities to track down is known as a “ghost gun,” which Litton used. Although Litton had a long criminal history including theft and identity fraud, Sheriff Honea disclosed that he had no recorded violent felonies but was known to suffer from mental illness.
Investigators found that Litton thought he was responding to U.S. participation in Middle Eastern crises, particularly in Palestine and Yemen, by taking countermeasures. According to Honea, it’s still unknown why Litton targeted the Seventh-Day Adventist school. Officials think Litton may have had a family connection to Feather River School because he himself had gone to a Seventh-Day Adventist school in another area as a child.
During a news conference, Honea stated that he had that as a reason. I can’t hypothesize as to how he confused the Seventh-Day Adventist Church with the events in Palestine and Yemen. I doubt that we will ever find out.
The fact that Litton had made a similar appointment at another Seventh-Day Adventist school for Thursday was also disclosed by authorities, raising the possibility that the Oroville attack was a component of a larger scheme.
The shooting, which stunned the close-knit Oroville community and sparked new worries about school security and the danger of untraceable firearms, is still being investigated by law authorities.
The community is still looking for explanations in the wake of the attack, as the suspect’s writings indicate a misguided attempt to link local targets to global strife.
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