Boys shot at Christian school survive critical surgeries

The Butte County Sheriff’s Office on Friday said the injured kindergarten students made it through surgery but still faced long roads to recovery. A shooter on Wednesday opened fire at Feather River Adventist School in the Northern California town of Oroville, injuring Roman Mendez, age 6, and Elias Wolford, age 5. Investigators identified the shooter as 56-year-old Glenn Litton. He died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound on the campus shortly after the shooting, police said.

Litton accessed the campus by setting up a meeting with administrators to discuss enrolling his grandson at the school, said Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea. However, he did not have a grandson, and the meeting was only a ruse, Honea said. Authorities have not determined a motive, but said the shooter may have targeted the school for its affiliation with a Seventh-day Adventist Church, Honea said. Officials also uncovered writings by the shooter that suggested he attacked the children in response to America’s involvement in conflicts in the Middle East.

How have other officials reacted to the shooting? Oroville Mayor David Pittman on Thursday thanked first responders, saying that schools must plan and train for shootings. Litton had previously been a member of another Adventist church and attended an Adventist school when he was a child, the Northern California Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church said on Friday. The church group closed some schools on Friday to provide staff and students with counseling. Meanwhile, Republican California State Representative Bill Essayli on Thursday introduced a bill that would require public schools to have at least one armed school resource officer on campus. The measure would not apply to private schools.

Dig deeper: Read Marc LiVecche’s opinion column about the federal report on the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.