A man who investigators say shot two kindergartners at a Christian school in Northern California may have been animated by the delusion that he was part of a paramilitary force combating U.S. support for the “genocide and oppression of Palestinians.”
Glenn Litton, 56, shot two boys with a handgun on Wednesday at Oroville’s Feather River Adventist School and then turned the gun on himself before law enforcement arrived, authorities said. He died of an “apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound,” according to the Butte County Sheriff’s Office.
The two victims, ages 5 and 6, were hospitalized in “critical but stable” condition, officials said Thursday. “They have a very long road ahead of them, in terms of recovery,” Sheriff Kory Honea said at a press conference.
The shooting at the Seventh-day Adventist school shocked Oroville, a town of 19,000 about 70 miles north of Sacramento. The community quickly planned a vigil for the two young victims to take place before an annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Friday night. The sheriff’s office also plans to host a fundraiser for the boys’ families, local news reported.
“We are absolutely devastated by this senseless act of violence,” said an emotional Laurie Trujillo, a spokesperson for the Northern California Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, during a joint press conference with law enforcement on Thursday.
Feather River Adventist School has roughly 30 students, according to its website.
The church temporarily closed all of its schools in Northern California.
“I would like to ask that people of all faiths join us as we pray and strive to move forward,” Trujillo said.
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are involved in the investigation.
“Our people are working day and night … to get us all the answers that we seek,” FBI Special Agent Sid Patel said during the press conference.
While officials are still trying to determine a motive, investigators shared information that appeared to provide some insight into the suspect’s thinking. Litton had a lengthy rap sheet dating back to his teenage years. He had shown a pattern of thefts and identity fraud, though had no known record of violent crime.
Litton “has severe mental health issues going back to age 16,” Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey said at the press conference, citing a 2015 federal probation report, though law enforcement officials said they were not aware of his official diagnosis.
Honea shared Litton’s reference to Palestinians during the press conference. He characterized it as “written information that we received that we believe came from him.”
The information was transcribed by law enforcement under the header “Suspect’s Motivation.” It read:
“Countermeasure involving child executions has now been imposed at the Seventh Day Adventist school in California, United States by The International Alliance. I, Lieutenant Glenn Litton of the Alliance carried out countermeasure in necessitated response to Americas involvement with Genocide and Oppression of Palestinians along with attacks towards Yemen.”
Investigators said they are taking the statement seriously to rule out the possibility of a terrorist network.
“I will tell you that we have been working diligently to try to determine if there is in fact an International Alliance,” Honea said. “At this point we have not been able to find any organization that calls themselves the International Alliance and that is active in this regard.”
It was not clear why Litton targeted the school. Litton himself was once a member of the church. Investigators said he had researched an “alternative target” to the Feather River school also affiliated with the church.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a Protestant denomination that, like Judaism, observes Sabbath on Saturday as commanded in the Hebrew Bible. The church has roughly 1.2 million adherents in the United States.
When news of Litton’s statement about Palestinians broke, some pro-Israel social media accounts held it up as evidence of violence endemic to the pro-Palestinian movement. Others compared the incident to that of Aaron Bushnell, a former member of the U.S. Air Force who died after setting himself on fire in February in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. Bushnell has been celebrated by some pro-Palestinian activists for his opposition to what he called a U.S.-supported “genocide.”
This was not the first time in recent years that a man committed an act of violence apparently racked by delusions linked to Jews and Israel. David DePape, who in 2022 broke into the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and attacked her husband with a hammer, published antisemitic screeds defending the rapper Ye and blaming Jews for the rise of Hitler and the invasion of Ukraine.
Law enforcement said that Litton was well known to them and had been homeless before the attack. In 2015 and 2016, he pleaded guilty to making fake passports using the stolen identities of prison inmates, the FBI’s Patel said. More recently, Litton was allegedly found with a forged driver’s license under the fictitious name “Michael Sanders.” In March, law enforcement said he was accused of stealing $1,166 from a CVS in Phoenix on his second day of work there.