School shooting at Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Palermo, CA
An adult man was at the school to discuss enrollment when he shot two kindergartners on the playground and then killed himself.
At 1pm on December 4, an adult man shot two students and then killed himself at Feather River School of the Seventh-Day Adventists in Palermo, CA. The campus is located in a rural agricultural area of 5,700 people south of Oroville, CA. The school has 5 staff members and 33 students in k-8 classes.
Very few school shootings across US history have been committed by adults with a political motive. Investigators believe the gunman targeted the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Palermo, CA because of its affiliation with the church and he was motivated as a response to the war in Gaza.
The day after the attack, a note was found detailing the gunman's motive. The note said he sought to carry out the "child executions" as a "response to America's involvement with Genocide and Oppression of Palestinians along with the attacks towards Yemen".
Authorities said the gunman had a lengthy mental health and criminal history, which included charges of theft, fraud, and forgery over the years. The shooter attended a Seventh-day Adventist School in Paradise, California (~40 years ago) and had a relative who attended the targeted school many years ago, investigators said. However, investigators said there is no direct connection between the school and the suspect.
Unlike teenage school shooters who have a direct connection and grievance focused on a specific school they attended, an adult with political or terrorism motives will look for a “soft target” with the highest probability of success. Teenage school shooters commit highly personal attacks while adult terrorists want to send a larger message look for the best chance of a successful attack. Per police, he had also contacted another school, Red Bluff Seventh-day Adventist School, for a tour under the alias ‘Michael Sanders’. Police believe this school could have been an alternative target.
Butte County Sheriff said the 56-year-old gunman had scheduled a meeting with a school administrator to discuss enrolling a student. The meeting was seemingly cordial and he went on a tour, but things took a turn when the gunman walked towards a bathroom and started opening fire. The gunfire hit students outside a classroom, striking two kindergarten-aged children.
Both victims are in critical but stable condition after being airlifted to the hospital.
Footage of the crime scene shows a blue tarp covering an adult's body on the playground. The shooter was dead before police arrived and a handgun was found next to his body. It appeared the weapon used in the shooting was a ghost gun that can be ordered online and self-manufactured to avoid background checks. The shooter would be disqualified from purchasing a firearm because of several convictions leading to sentences state and federal prisons for forgery and motor vehicle theft. The shooter was reportedly living in a hotel prior to the attack.
Based on the location of the school, there is probably a 10+ minute police response to the campus depending on where the closest officer is patrolling in Yuba City (25 minutes south) or Oroville (15 minutes north).
Details of the campus
This is a tiny k-8 private religious school in a rural area. The website only lists three teachers and the principal is the instructor for grades 4-8. It’s completely unrealistic for this size of school with limited staff and resources to have any kind of security beyond the fence around the campus.
Even if the school had security, if someone makes an appointment to discuss enrollment, it would be normal to allow them to be on the campus and to observe classes.
The fenced campus has a gravel parking lot, a single classroom building, a gym, basketball courts, and a utility building for the maintenance and grounds equipment (the principal probably cuts the grass too).
The school buildings sits in a large field without any other buildings or businesses in the immediate area.
The entire area that surrounds the school campus is farmland or open land. On the East Coast, we tend to think about California as sprawling cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco but much of the state is very rural and very isolated small towns with small winding roads between them.
National Picture
This was the 310th shooting on campus so far in 2024 (here is a summary of every incident in November 2024). It’s unclear if the Feather River Adventist School shooter had a plan to harm specific students. Suicide is not usually a spontaneous act, and he took the time to make an appointment so that he would be allowed on campus. Those two details both point to some level of pre-planning.
So far this year, there have been planned attacks at rural schools in Perry, IA, Mount Horeb, WI, and Apalachee, GA. Over the last 60 years, the majority of high casualty school shootings took place in rural communities or suburbs with less than 50,000 people.
This incident highlights a very specific—but luckily rare—threat to schools and any public places. There is no way for a tiny school with 5 staff members to prevent a random person from opening fire. Even if the staff at the school were armed or there was a guard, he killed himself right after opening fire.
Most school shootings and mass shootings are a person who is known (e.g., employee, student, parent, staff member) and there are warning signs for weeks, months, or even years before the attack takes place.
As I wrote back in June, the United States is involved in conflicts across the Middle East, there are dozens of terrorist groups who could be motivated to attack a school in the United States. Unlike kids who commit school shootings based on a specific and personal grievance connected to the campus, these terrorist groups could see a school as a high profile “soft target” that gets international media attention for their group (read more: Ten school shooting threats we are failing to imagine).
“There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. What looks strange is thought improbable, and what is improbable need not be considered.”
- Thomas Schelling, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision
David Riedman is the creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, Chief Data Officer at a global risk management firm, and a tenure-track professor. Listen to my weekly podcast—Back to School Shootings—or my recent interviews on Freakonomics Radio, New England Journal of Medicine, and my article on CNN about AI and school security.