Kindergartner wounded Butte County school shooting may lose use of his legs, family says
One of the kindergarten boys critically injured during a shooting at a Seventh-day Adventist school last week may never regain the use of his legs, family members posted.
OROVILLE, Calif. – One of the kindergartners shot last week at a Seventh-Day Adventist school in Northern California hasn’t been able to move his legs, his grandmother wrote on Facebook.
Elias Wolfrod had an MRA on Wednesday, which indicated the shooting damaged the outer edge of his spinal cord, Debbie Wolford wrote.
The bullet went through his chest and abdomen, piercing and nicking multiple organs before exiting, the family wrote on a GoFundMe page.
“What this shooter did was, it stole his normal childhood. And for all the other kids at the school too,” Elias’ aunt, Tawnee Preisner, told KCRA. “They were there in a private school feeling like this is their safe zone.”
The other kindergartner shot, 6-year-old Roman Mendez, is also still in the hospital.
His sisters wrote that he was receiving care at UC Davis Medical Center.
Elias and Roman were shot by shooter Glenn Litton during recess at Feather River Adventist School in Butte County on Dec. 4.
Sheriff Kory L. Honea said Litton then used the weapon — a so-called ghost gun — to kill himself just yards from the school’s playground.
Glenn Litton used a “ruse” of pretending to enroll a fictitious grandson to gain entry to the school, Honea said.
He said that Litton was mentally ill and believed by targeting children he was carrying out “counter-measures” in response to America’s involvement in Middle East violence, Honea said.
Honea said the man is believed to have targeted the Feather River School in Wednesday’s attack, though it’s unclear why. Litton had attended a school of Seventh-Day Adventists in another town as a child, the sheriff said, and he possibly had a relative who attended Feather River as a young child.
Litton, 56, had a lengthy criminal history — mostly theft and identity theft — but authorities said they did not find any violent crimes on his record.
The Seventh-Day Adventist Church is a Christian denomination in which members consider the Bible their only creed and believe that the second coming of Christ is near.
The shooting occurred at the private K-8 school with fewer than three dozen students in Oroville, on the edge of the tiny community of Palermo, about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of Sacramento.
If you’d like to help Elias, click here. If you’d like to help Roman, click here.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
