(Reuters) -A gunman shot and wounded two children at a California elementary school on Wednesday before shooting himself dead, the local sheriff’s department said.
The shooting occurred at Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Oroville, California, located about 55 miles (89 km) north of Sacramento, the Butte County Sheriff’s office said by telephone.
Megan McMann, a spokesperson for the Butte County Sheriff’s Office, said that officers responded quickly to reports of an unidentified adult male firing shots at students on campus at 1:09 p.m.
By the time deputies arrived, the man was dead with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gun wound, McMann said.
“Two students sustained gunshot wounds and were taken to local hospitals for treatment,” McMann said, adding that she did not know their conditions.
There is as yet no known motive for the shooting nor has the gunman been identified, McMann said.
In a post on social media, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office said that students were being taken to a nearby church.
McMann said an investigation is ongoing and officers are trying to determine whether the suspected gunman had a connection to the school.
The Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists, operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, serves children from kindergarten to the eighth grade, roughly from ages 5 to 13, according to its website.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks, Costas Pitas and Daniel Trotta; editing by Rami Ayyub and Sandra Maler)
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