Tehama school shooting: Teachers and staff hailed after saving lives of 'countless' children

Bloodshed 'could have been so much worse'

Yellow tags mark where bullet casings found at one of the scenes of the shooting spree at Rancho Tehama Reserve, on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

As America grapples with another incident of gun violence, officials have said: it could have been far worse.

Reports that a gunman was attacking an elementary school in the northern California community of Rancho Tehama Reserve immediately conjured the spectre of a mass slaughter of children, reminiscent of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

But according to sheriff’s officials, no children were among the four people killed by the shooter. Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston told reporters that was mostly because staff at the elementary school heard gunshots erupting nearby and quickly locked the school down, blocking the gunman from inflicting bloodshed.

“This incident, as tragic and bad as it is, could have been so much worse if it wasn’t for the quick thinking and staff at our elementary school,” Mr Johnston told reporters. “They went on an immediate lockdown without having to be told to do so by law enforcement”.

The swift response, Mr Johnston said, “saved countless lives”.

The gunman rammed his car through a fence and a gate to gain access to the school and then proceeded on foot, Mr Johnston said, toting a semiautomatic rifle and clad in a vest embedded with clips of the kind “that you sometimes see soldiers wear”.

While “one or two” students were injured after the gunman fired at classrooms, Mr Johnston said, he was discouraged enough that he directed his violence elsewhere.

“It appears that because he couldn’t make access to any of the rooms, that they were locked, that he gave it up and re-entered the vehicle and then went on his killing spree and took it to the streets of Rancho Tehama,” he said. The shooter later died in a gun battle with authorities.

Authorities are still searching for a motive, and Mr Johnston said it appeared the gunman chose the school “as a random target” rather than with specific victims in mind. He also began “driving by residences and arbitrarily shooting at them,” Mr Johnston said.

It has emerged that the gunman was connected to one of his slain victims. In January he was arrested for assaulting her with a deadly weapon, which Mr Johnston referred to as part of an “ongoing dispute between he and another lady”.