Victims and shooter identified by sheriff in Butte County school shooting
BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - The Butte County Sheriff's Department on Thursday identified the school shooter and the two victims who were shot and injured at Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Palermo one day earlier.
The two boys are kindergartners at the school and are said to be in critical condition. The victims were identified as Roman Mendez, 6, and Elias Wolford, 5. Roman suffered two gunshot wounds, and Elias was shot once in the abdomen, Sheriff Kory L. Honea said.
The sheriff said both boys have a number of surgeries ahead of them.
"The fact that they are currently still with us is a miracle," Honea said.
Honea asked that everyone respect the privacy of the victims and their families.
The Butte County sheriff has identified the victims of the school shooting in Palermo.
The shooter was identified as Glenn Litton, 56. Officials described him as homeless in recent years and that he spends time between Sacramento and Chico. Honea said he has a "lengthy criminal history" and has had long-standing mental health issues. He has a history of theft, identity theft, fraud and forgery dating back to the 1990s and early 2000s.
Sheriff Honea said Litton had not been booked into the Butte County Jail since 2003. Officials said they did not find any violent crimes on his record.
More recently, he had brushes with the law in the Bay Area, the sheriff said. Last month he was arrested in South San Francisco for being in a stolen U-Haul pickup. He was booked into the San Mateo County Jail.
Investigators are looking into the shooter's possible motive and said it appears he conflated global conflicts with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Officials said the shooter believed or indicated that he was carrying out a "countermeasure involving child executions." In something Litton had written, he claimed affiliation to "The International Alliance" and referred to himself as a "lieutenant" of that alliance. He claimed his actions were in response to "[Americas] involvement with Genocide and Oppression of Palestinians along with attacks towards Yemen."
Investigators are looking into Litton's potential affiliations, but authorities so far have said the International Alliance does not exist. Investigators also mentioned there was an alternate target, another Seventh-Day Adventist school in Red Bluff, Calif., where Litton had a similar appointment.
Litton had attended a school of Seventh-Day Adventists in another town as a child. The sheriff said the gunman possibly had a relative who attended Feather River as a young child.
Butte County Sheriff releases image of school shooter who killed himself in Palermo.
The school shooting occurred shortly after 1 p.m. Wednesday in Palermo, Calif., a small town south of Oroville.
RELATED: All Seventh-Day Adventist schools in NorCal closed after 2 kindergartners shot
The suspected gunman took his own life, officials said.
The sheriff detailed Litton's whereabouts on the day of the shooting. In the early morning hours he was said to be in the vicinity of a Motel 6 in Chico. By 8:30 a.m. he arrived in Oroville and was carrying a large duffle bag.
Officials said LItton had apparently made an appointment at the school days in advance. The appointment was with an administrator on campus on Wednesday.
Somewhere around 10 a.m. Litton ordered an energy drink at a Rally's. Honea said the gunman ordered an Uber under a fake alias at 11:38 a.m. The driver picked him up near the Rally's.
Honea said at 12:11 p.m., the gunman was dropped off at the school by the driver for the fake meeting with a school administrator.
Officials said Litton had pretended he was enrolling a grandchild at the school. He used this ruse as an excuse to gain entry to the school.
Shortly after the meeting, shots rang out, Honea said.
The small rural school was closed Thursday, but sheriff's deputies walked around the campus behind shuttered gates in the morning and staff members carried classroom items out to their cars.
Shawn Webber, an Oroville city councilmember, said the region is reeling.
"When you see this on the news or nationally and it's like, those things don't happen here. Well, yesterday (Wednesday) it happened here," he said. "It just absolutely violated the peace of our community."
The gunman is identified in the Palermo, CA shooting.
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.
Palermo is about 65 miles north of Sacramento.
KTVU's Amber Lee and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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2kindergarteners injured in religious school shooting; suspected gunman dead in Northern California
Two children were wounded Wednesday in a shooting at a tiny religious school in Butte County. Deputies and a CHP officer arrived to find the gunman on the ground, dead after apparently shooting himself.