Officials in Butte County, California, held a press conference to give a fuller account of the deadly shooting at the Chico branch of the Butte County Library, which they described as an active shooter incident that took place the previous day. The sheriff and other officials laid out a detailed timeline of the attack and the response, and for the first time publicly identified those who were killed.
According to the sheriff, two adults were killed in the shooting, and he acknowledged their names. The first was 74-year-old Robert Johnson and the second was 46-year-old Jacob Hull. A female juvenile, whom officials said they would not name, was transported to the hospital with a non life threatening injury described as fairly minor, after broken glass cut her on the side. She has since been released and is with her family.
Officials stressed that all of those harmed were members of the public using the library. According to the sheriff, the two men who died and the injured juvenile were all patrons of the library and were not employees of any sort. The detail underscored that the people caught up in the violence had simply been visiting the public facility when the shooting began.
The sheriff walked reporters through a precise timeline of the emergency. He said the initial 911 call came in at 5:12 and 58 seconds, and that dispatchers could overhear what they described as screaming, followed by two gunshots. The first officer arrived on scene at 5:14 and 44 seconds, a response time of less than two minutes, and the suspect was in custody at 5:16 and 53 seconds.
That sequence meant the time from the initial 911 call to having the suspect in custody was less than four minutes. According to the sheriff, the suspect exited the east side of the library, where a perimeter had already been established, and was taken into custody without incident, with no use of force by any of the officers. He said the rapid response is what mitigated further loss of life in the community.
Officials identified the suspect as 18-year-old Bradley Scott Sayer of Chico, and said he had no known connections to any of the victims in the library. Based on information revealed during interviews, detectives believe the suspect was influenced by the Columbine High School shooting of 1999. The briefing was delivered alongside the district attorney, a United States attorney, and the FBI's Sacramento field office, reflecting both state and federal involvement in the case.