Officials in the north California have identified the man who shot two kindergarteners at a religious elementary school Wednesday afternoon before turning the gun on himself, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office said.
The Butte County Sheriff’s Office shared new details about the shooting at a media briefing late Thursday afternoon. The shooter has been identified as Glen Litton, a 56-year-old man with a “long criminal history” of forgery and identity theft, as well as a history of mental health issues, Butte County Sheriff Cory Honea told reporters.
The victims were Roman Mendez, six, who suffered two gunshot wounds, and Elias Wilford, five, who was shot once in the abdomen. The injured children face a long recovery, Honea said, and will likely need multiple surgeries. Still, the fact that they survived is a “miracle,” he added.
“The people who really matter during this investigation are the victims. I certainly don’t want them to be lost in the general history,” Honea said.
A GoFundme was created to support medical care for children. He had raised $300 of the $10,000 goal.
Litton opened fire at the Feather River Seventh-day Adventist School just outside Oroville, a town of 20,000 in the state’s far north, around 1 p.m. A California Highway Patrol trooper who arrived on the scene minutes later found a man dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Honea said.
The sheriff’s office dispatched all available officers in the county to the scene of the shooting. The CHP officer who was first dispatched to the school arrived within 90 seconds of the first 911 call, Honea said.
Investigators determined the Litton family had a meeting with an administrator to discuss enrolling a family member at the private school, which serves about 35 students in kindergarten through eighth grade in the small Butte County community of Palermo.
He was dropped off on campus by an Uber driver, who authorities are questioning, and Litton’s meeting with school staff was described as “cordial,” Honea said.
“There is nothing about the meeting that should cause concern on the part of the administrator,” he said.
The shooting erupted after the meeting as the students were returning to class after a lunch break, sixth-grader Jocelyn Orlando told CBS News Sacramento.
“We went to lunch break and basically everyone in my classroom heard gunshots and most of the people were screaming,” she said. “We all went into the office, closed the curtains, locked the doors, basically did what we would do in a school shooting, and then one of the teachers came and we all ran into the gym.”
Lytton appeared to have killed himself after the shooting, Honea said. A gun was found near his body, which was near the slide and other playground equipment at the school.
Authorities believe the shooter had no connection to the victims or the school. They are trying to determine his motive, but believe he may have targeted the school because of its affiliation with the Seventh-day Adventist church. Investigators are working to reconstruct Litton’s activities before the shooting, Honea said, and are trying to contact his family before sharing his identity with the public.
Litton was charged with failing to return a rental car last month and was arrested by San Francisco police shortly after. Police found him carrying a fake driver’s license with the same name he used to make an appointment at the school.
He told the school he was interested in enrolling his grandson.
“It appears to us that the story was a ruse to set up a meeting so he could gain access to campus,” Honea said.
The sheriff showed footage of Lytton Walkeyon campus with his hand reaching into his jacket before pulling out a weapon.
Lytton attended an Adventist school in the nearby community of Paradise as a child. Officials have a statement believed to be from Lytton, in which he claimed he was a member of an international alliance and took the “countermeasure” in response to “US involvement in the genocide and oppression of Palestinians along with attacks on Yemen”.
But investigators working with the Department of Homeland Security believe the shooting was an isolated incident and highlighted Litton’s history of mental health issues. He also appears to have considered attacking a Seventh-day Adventist school in a nearby town, Honea said.
Butte County has been the site of repeated tragedies in recent years — largely deadly wildfires, including in 2018. Campfirewhich killed 85 people, and Fire at Sever complex. c 2022a man opened fire on a Greyhound bus, killing one person, a 43-year-old woman traveling with her two children, and injuring four others, including a pregnant woman.
“Here we are back in Butte County dealing with another major incident, a major tragedy,” Honea said. “This community has been through so much in the last three years, it’s hard to believe we’re back here.”
