Two kindergarten students are in critical condition after a gunman opened fire at a Seventh-Day Adventist school in Oroville, California, on Wednesday. Authorities believe the shooter may have targeted the school because of its religious affiliation, NBC News reported.
Butte County Sheriff Kory L. Honea said that the gunman met with the principal of Feather River Adventist School in the early afternoon on Monday, but shortly after that meeting, the man opened fire, wounding two boys, ages 5 and 6. When law enforcement officers arrived on the scene, they found the gunman dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The victims are in “critical but stable condition” as of Thursday. The students “have a long road ahead of them” to recovery, according to the sheriff.
Scene from earlier this afternoon at the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Palermo in Butte County. Two students (5 & 6 y.o.) are being treated at out-of-area hospitals for gunshot wounds.
The shooter is dead from a self-inflicted shot. @CapRadioNews pic.twitter.com/KoLeWueZ7a
— Kate Wolffe (@katewolffe) December 5, 2024
Honea said that information received by the sheriff’s office “leads us to believe that the subject responsible for the shooting targeted this school because of its affiliation with the Seventh-day Adventist Church,” according to NBC News. In a Thursday update, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office said authorities “positively identified the suspect and are diligently working to establish the motive.” The sheriff’s office will hold a press conference at 3:00 p.m. PT on Thursday.
Honea said that the suspect was dropped off at the school by an Uber and had a “cordial” meeting with the principal to discuss enrolling a family member in the school, CNN reported. Feather River Adventist School is located north of Sacramento in the town of Oroville and has an enrollment of just 35 students.
“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,” Honea said.
Seventh-Day Adventism is a branch of Protestantism and has around 1.2 million members in the U.S. and Canada and 22 million members worldwide.
In March 2023, a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, was targeted by a trans-identifying woman who shot and killed three students and three staff members. Before targeting The Covenant School in Nashville, the shooter — a white female — wrote in a manifesto about transgenderism and “white privilege.”