At Tehama vigil, tears, cheers and a reminder: ‘Please, please report everybody who shoots’

Reporting from RancHO Tehama, Calif. —  Tears for those who were killed or hurt, applause for the schoolteachers who saved lives and loud cheers for the strength of their small rural enclave filled the community hall here Wednesday night.

But some interjected a strong message into the vigil marking Tuesday’s shooting spree: Don’t ignore the gunshots.

Martha Monroy lives in the neighborhood where gunman Kevin Neal drove through twice on Tuesday, hunting victims. She was among the residents to pick up the microphone and call for less tolerance of backyard gunfire.

Neal had a history of complaints for firing guns from his home on Bobcat Lane, despite a court order since March banning him from having firearms.

On Tuesday he went on a rampage, killing four residents and wounding at least 10 more, before he died in a shootout with police. Later, officers discovered the body of his wife beneath the floor of their home.

“When somebody shoots, please, please report everybody who shoots,” Monroy pleaded when it was her turn to speak. “Call the police, please. Nobody has the right to shoot nobody.”

Hers was a touchy point, even at the vigil. Another speaker picked up the passing microphone to interject: “It’s not the gun, it’s the person.”

A man who introduced himself as Rob said the shooter and his wife once lived near him in another part of Rancho Tehama.

“Kevin and Barb used to be my neighbors,” he said, his voice breaking. Authorities have not named Neal’s wife. “I didn’t notice anything strange like that. And I feel Barbara was caught up in it, and she got shot.”

Rob voiced remorse over the unheeded reports of nightly gunfire at Neal’s house.

“There was shooting every night. There should have been something done,” he said, to murmurs of agreement.

“There were shots every night, and I never knew it was him,” he said, wishing aloud that he had realized it was Neal. “I could have stopped him.”

There were prayers said by the more than 100 community members who crowded in the small hall to capacity, standing shoulder to shoulder. But some still needed to recount their personal brushes with the violence of the day before.

They included a father who had dropped his child off at Tehama Elementary School and found himself barricaded inside when the gunman tried to get in.

When he tried to look out a window, he drew gunfire. He found himself moving children huddled beneath their desks to safer places, including a 6-year-old hit by the gunfire. At the vigil, he met the family of that boy and they hugged, sobbing in gratitude for one another.

Against the back wall sat Anelina Sanchez, quietly struggling to come to terms with her own contact with the shooter. She had stepped out of her house that morning on Fawn Lane, not far from where the gunman had killed his wife and three others. She saw a man in a car who shouted out his window at her in anger.

“He’s asking me, ‘Do you know somebody killed over here in the Rancho?’ And I say, ‘No, who it was?’ ” Sanchez said, “and he is taking the gun out and he said, ‘That’s me.’ And he shot five times.”

Sanchez said she dropped to the ground behind her neighbor’s fence and crawled back into the house. Officers later found the bullets that had missed her. But before then, she said, she had to deal with the sight of a car off Oak Park Road, its windows blown out, the passengers bleeding. And the story her daughter brought home of being fired at in her car as the gunman passed by.

“I am so scared. I am so scared of anything,” Sanchez said. “If somebody said stop, I will go faster, because I am so scared...

“Even last night, I couldn’t sleep.”

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