5 dead, 3 children wounded after shooting spree in northern California

• At least five people, including a gunman, are dead following a shooting at a northern California reserve, authorities said.

• Police said the shooting occurred at multiple scenes, including the Rancho Tehama elementary school.

• Witnesses reported hearing dozens of shots fired just before 8 a.m. local time (11 a.m. EST).

• At least three children were wounded, police said.

Four victims and a suspected gunman are dead following a shooting spree across multiple locations at the Rancho Tehama reserve in northern California, including at a local elementary school, authorities said Tuesday.

Police said at least three children are among the wounded, including a six-year-old with two gunshot wounds who has been airlifted to a hospital. Another child was reportedly shot in the leg, the Redding Record Searchlight reported.

Authorities and witnesses told media that the gunman appeared to pick targets randomly, driving around the community and shooting at people from his car. Police said the shooting appears to have begun as a "domestic violence incident," though they did not go into detail.

The suspected gunman was fatally shot by police, according to Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston, though he declined to release his name. Johnston added that a rifle and handguns were recovered from the scenes.

Johnston said it remains unclear how many people were injured, due to the number of shooting scenes, but he said "a number" of students were medically evacuated from the reserve, and authorities have fanned out across seven separate scenes of interest.

"We have about 100 law enforcement personnel in Rancho Tehama right now with multiple, multiple scenes," he said.

Witnesses reported that shots were fired at the Rancho Tehama Elementary School near Corning just before 8 a.m. local time.

The elementary school is located in the Rancho Tehama Reserve, an area with a population of 1,485 people, according to the 2010 census. The community is located roughly 135 miles northwest of Sacramento, and 50 miles north of Redding, where some of the victims have been hospitalized.

'This guy has been crazy, threatening us'

Coy Ferreira, a father of a kindergarten student at the school, told KRCR News Channel 7 that he heard the shots break out as he was dropping his daughter off at class. He told the station a school secretary shouted for children to get inside classrooms because someone was shooting at the school.

Ferreira said he ran into one classroom full of students and saw shots coming through the windows, hitting one young boy in the foot and chest.

Rancho Tehama resident Salvador Tello told the Record Searchlight that he was en route to the school with his three children when he saw the gunman open fire on the truck in front of him. He told his children to get down, then he put his truck in reverse, he told the newspaper.

As he was driving away, he said, he saw a woman lying dead in the street with what appeared to be her wounded husband lying next to her.

Corning resident Brian Flint told media that the suspected gunman was his neighbor, whom he identified only as "Kevin." Flint said his roommate was injured in the shooting, and that Flint's truck had been stolen.

Flint told the Record Searchlight that living near the gunman was "hell," adding that the man was a felon who had often harassed him.

"The crazy thing is that the neighbor has been shooting a lot of bullets lately, hundreds of rounds, large magazines," Flint said. "We just, we made it aware that this guy has been crazy and he's been threatening us."

Another witness, who identified herself only as Tiffany, told the Los Angeles Times that she heard the gunfire from the café she owns nearby. She said she heard about 100 rounds fired from what sounded like multiple guns.