Two children were shot by a gunman who opened fire at a Northern California elementary school Wednesday before killing himself, the Butte County sheriff said.

The incident occurred around 1 p.m. at Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists near Palermo, the sheriff’s office said.

The gunman, an adult male, is not believed to be affiliated with the school, Sheriff Kory L. Honea told reporters at the scene.

The two children with gunshot wounds were taken to hospitals, and one of them was airlifted, he said. Their conditions, ages and genders were not released.

Honea called the shooting "both horrific and tragic."

Callers to 911 from the school reported that a person on campus had fired shots at students, Honea said.

“When we arrived, we located an individual, an adult male,” Honea said. “He was down, appears to have sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

Honea did not have the gunman's identity when he briefed reporters after the incident. Investigators have a potential identification of the shooter and are working to confirm that, he said.

“We are very, very early on in this investigation. There is still a lot of unknown questions, and answers that we are trying to obtain,” Honea said.

The Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists is a K-8 school with about 35 students, Honea said. The students at the school were taken to the Oroville Church of the Nazarene to be reunited with their parents.

The school is located in Butte County, south of the city of Oroville and near Palermo, around 60 miles north of Sacramento.

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“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).