Assessing The Lockdown At The Active Shooter Attack At The Rancho Tehama Elementary School, Tehama County, CA

By Dr. Joshua Sinai

With the current pandemic of active shooter-type violent incidents in the United States, and even overseas, in countries such as Serbia, everyone seeks to learn to apply best practices in preemptive prevention. This article presents a best practice case study of a school lockdown by its staff and administrators that prevented a potential catastrophe by a violent active shooter.

The Incident Shortly before 8 am, on November 14, 2017, while students were playing in the schoolyard at the Rancho Tehama Elementary School, Kevin Janson Neal, age 44, carried out a shooting attack against two of his next door neighbors, a quarter mile away, killing the husband and wife with whom he had an ongoing feud over illicit drug dealing. Upon hearing gunshots, the teachers and staff immediately placed the school under lockdown procedures by rushing the children into classrooms and under desks, locking the doors. The school’s gate was automatically locked. Neal then drove his stolen white Ford F-150 pick-up truck towards the school, crashing it through the facility’s front gate as the staff and students hunkered down. Neal emerged from his crashed truck with an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle. Wearing a tactical ballistic vest with extra magazines for his guns, he stormed into the school’s quad and shot at the walls and windows, but was unable to enter the schoolrooms. One student was shot in a classroom while under a desk. After about six minutes with Neal becoming f...