It was California's forgotten mass shooting. But for victims, the 'hell' never ends

[Demovictory9]

It was California’s forgotten mass shooting. But for victims, the ‘hell’ never ends


RANCHO TEHAMA RESERVE, Calif. — Gage Elliott became an orphan on Nov. 14, 2017. He was 7 years old.
That morning, his father and paternal grandmother, who were raising him together in a modest house at the end of a gravel road, were gunned down during a mass shooting across this remote north-central California community. Over two days, according to the FBI, five people were slain and 14 others were wounded, including five children at Rancho Tehama Elementary School, before the gunman, 44-year-old Kevin Janson Neal, took his own life.

Danny Elliott and Diana Steele were killed five years after Gage’s mother died in an accident, said Sissy Feitelberg, Gage’s maternal grandmother. They were the second and third people shot to death by Neal, who lived in a light-blue mobile home barely 100 yards from their property.

Gage never spent another night in that house on Bobcat Lane where he once played in the yard with his father. He never went back to Rancho Tehama Elementary School after that day, when he and approximately 100 other students were locked down after staffers heard gunfire nearby and quickly hustled them in from recess.


Sissy Feitelberg with grandson Gage Elliott, who was orphaned at the age of 7 in the November 2017 shooting.(Sissy Feitelberg)
He never returned to the classroom where the gunman unsuccessfully tried to open the door, which had been locked just seconds earlier. He never saw the school’s new windows, which replaced the ones shattered by Neal’s bullets, or the repairs to the bullet holes in its cream-colored siding and turquoise-painted beams.

Gage never again saw fellow students who hid under their desks while Neal fired clip after clip at the school, including a 6-year-old who survived being shot in the chest by a bullet that traveled through a classroom wall. And he never saw the banner draped across the school’s front columns that declares “Rancho Strong” in big block letters.

“His life changed that day forever. It was gone, gone. It ripped his world,” said Feitelberg, who moved her grandson out of Rancho Tehama Reserve after the shooting. “He has not, and he will not, talk about his father. It’s definitely affected Gage, and it will for the rest of his life.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-09/rancho-tehama-california-mass-shooting-victims-suffer

[SoCalDavidS]

1. Ted Cruz: "But How Many Doors Were There?" nt

[AndyS]

2. I have an open invitation to any of the gun supporters here on DU.

The ones who keep telling me that 'this wouldn't prevent _______" or laws won't stop criminals.

If I made you King what would YOU do? Leave it alone? Pass out more guns? Is there nothing you might suggest that might reduce the crazy level of death and destruction here in the 'Land of the Free"?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. The LA Times article really brings the trauma home. So very sad. No help or hope. n/t