SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The man who authorities say shot two kindergartners at a small faith-based school this week may have also targeted another Northern California school affiliated with the same church.

Glenn Litton, 56, shot two boys who were outside for recess at Feather River Adventist School before fatally shooting himself, Butte County sheriff’s officials said, and had entered the campus after setting up a meeting with school administrators using a fake name and concocted reason.

He had told the school that his daughter recently moved to nearby Gridley and that he was considering enrolling his grandson in the rural kindergarten through eighth grade school, located just off of Highway 70 in Butte County near Palermo and Oroville.

However, investigators have deemed that meeting a “ruse,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said at a news conference Thursday.

“We’ve also determined that there was an alternative target,” he said.

It appears Litton, who authorities said does not have a grandson, set up a similar ploy at another small Seventh-day Adventist school, this one in Red Bluff. A city of about 15,000 people, Red Bluff is about 70 miles northwest of Oroville.

Honea said that after the planned meeting and tour at Feather River Adventist School, Litton went to leave toward the parking lot, but instead turned through a breezeway that cuts through the schoolhouse and leads to a playground, near which he shot the two boys, identified by law enforcement as 5-year-old Elias Wolford and 6-year-old Roman Mendez.

Litton then turned the gun on himself and was found dead outside of the school by a California Highway Patrol officer who first responded to the school, Honea said. A handgun was found nearby.

Both boys were hospitalized with injuries from gunshot wounds and were described Thursday as being in critical but stable condition.

Honea said investigators found that Litton had arranged for a meeting under a similar pretense with the school in Red Bluff, which was scheduled for Thursday, the day after the shooting.

The Red Bluff Seventh-day Adventist School did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment.

The full scope of Litton’s motive was unclear, but investigators believe that the school was targeted because of its Seventh-day Adventist affiliation.

A written message authorities attributed to Litton, who had a history of crime and mental illness dating back to his teenage years, mused about carrying out “Countermeasures involving child executions” at “the Seventh Day Adventist school in California.” He also cited an apparently fictitious organization, and that the act was in response to “Genocide and Oppression of Palestinians.”

Honea said that “those were words that he wrote and that we attribute to him,” but would not clarify at this point in the investigation where the writings were found or came from.

At some point in Litton’s youth, he had attended a Seventh-day Adventist school in Paradise, also in Butte County, where there is both a Seventh-day Adventist elementary school and high school, the latter of which is called an academy.

It was unclear which school he had attended or for how long. Investigators will seek school records to clarify, Honea said.

Honea said it had been “many, many, many years” since Litton attended the school in Paradise, and that Litton may have also had a relative who attended the school where the shooting took place in Butte County, “but that would have been many, many years ago.”

Authorities described Litton as a homeless man who for years has split his time between the Sacramento and Chico areas.

“So there is no current connection … between Mr. Litton and the school that he went to and perpetrated this horrible act of violence,” Honea said. “It appears again that it’s based on his notion of the activities of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and why he selected that.”

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