5 dead, 3 children wounded after shooting spree in Northern California

• At least five people, including a gunman, are dead after a shooting at a Northern California reserve on Tuesday, authorities said.
• Police said the shooting occurred at multiple locations, including the Rancho Tehama Elementary School.
• Witnesses reported hearing dozens of shots fired just before 8 a.m. local time (11 a.m. ET).
• At least three children were wounded, police said.

At least four people and a gunman are dead after a shooting spree on Tuesday across multiple locations at the Rancho Tehama reserve in Northern California, including at a local elementary school, authorities said.

Police said at least three children were among the wounded, including a 6-year-old with two gunshot wounds who has been airlifted to a hospital. Another child was shot in the leg, the Redding Record Searchlight reported.

Authorities and witnesses told media that the gunman appeared to pick targets randomly, driving around the community and shooting at people from his car. Police officers said the shooting appeared to have begun as a “domestic violence incident,” though they did not go into detail.

The gunman was fatally shot by police, said Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston, though he declined to release a name. Johnston added that a rifle and handguns were recovered from the scenes.

Johnston said it was unclear because of the number of shooting locations how many people were injured, but he said that “a number” of students were medically evacuated from the reserve and that authorities had fanned out across seven scenes of interest.

“We have about 100 law-enforcement personnel in Rancho Tehama right now with multiple, multiple scenes,” he said.

Witnesses reported shots fired at the Rancho Tehama Elementary School, near Corning, just before 8 a.m. local time.

Rancho Tehama has a population of 1,485, according to the latest census. The community is roughly 135 miles northwest of Sacramento and 50 miles south of Redding, where some of the victims have been hospitalized.

‘This guy … he’s been threatening us’

Coy Ferreira, a father of a kindergarten student at the school, told KRCR News Channel 7 that he heard the shots as he was dropping his daughter off at class. He told the outlet that a school official shouted for children to get inside classrooms.

Ferreira said he ran into one classroom full of students and saw bullets coming through the windows, hitting one young boy in the foot and chest.

“He’s a really strong kid,” Ferreira told the news outlet. “I didn’t know he was shot for a good 30 minutes, until I got up to walk to the office in the classroom and I saw he had bloody clothes. He started crying, and I informed the teacher that he was shot.”

Salvador Tello, a Rancho Tehama resident, told the Record Searchlight that he was en route to the school with his three children when he saw a gunman open fire on the truck in front of him. He told his children to get down, then he put his truck in reverse, he told the newspaper.

As he was driving away, he said, he saw a woman dead in the street with a wounded man next to her.

Brian Flint, a resident of Corning, told news media that the gunman was his neighbor, whom he identified only as “Kevin.” Flint said his truck had been stolen and that his roommate was injured in the shooting.

Flint told the Record Searchlight that living near the gunman was “hell,” adding that the man was a felon who had often harassed him.

“The crazy thing is that the neighbor has been shooting a lot of bullets lately, hundreds of rounds, large magazines,” Flint said. “We made it aware that this guy is crazy and he’s been threatening us.”

Another witness, who identified herself only as Tiffany, told the Los Angeles Times that she heard the gunfire from the cafe she owns nearby. She said she heard about 100 rounds fired from what sounded like multiple guns.

Reporters tweeted photos and videos from the scene: