Rancho Tehama Gunman Feuded With Meth-Cooking Neighbors, Mom Says

RALEIGH, NC — Kevin Neal, the gunman who shot 14 people in and around Rancho Tehama in Northern California, killing four, called his mother a day before the rampage and told her he was tired from regularly feuding with his meth-cooking neighbors. He said the fumes were hurting his nine dogs and that he felt like he "was on a cliff" with "nowhere to go,"she said.

Neal's mother spoke by phone from Raleigh, North Carolina, where she lives. Neal grew up there and moved to California where he worked as a pot farmer. He recently married his longtime girlfriend.

"Mom it's all over now," Neal's weeping mother said on Tuesday, hours after the rampage. "I have done everything I could do and I am fighting against everyone who lives in this area."

The mother asked that only her first name, Anne, be used because she feared for her safety due to her son's feuding with neighbors he claimed were involved with gangs. She was unaware of her son's role in the rampage until contacted by AP.

In her last few talks with her son, Neal's mother said he sounded desperate and despairing over his relationship with his neighbors.

"All of a sudden, now I'm on a cliff and there's nowhere to go," she said her son told him Monday. "No matter where I go for help here I get nobody who will help me. All they are doing is trying to execute me here."

The first two people Neal shot and killed were neighbors. He stole a truck and sought seemingly random victims elsewhere in town, including an elementary school where children were locked in their classrooms. None was killed, though at least one boy was wounded.

Neal was killed by police as he tried to flee.

Last January Neal was charged with stabbing one of the neighbors, and Anne said she posted the $160,000 bail for him and had spent over $10,000 on lawyer's fees.

Police have declined to identify the shooter until his relatives are notified of his death, but confirmed the same man was charged with the January assault. The district attorney, Gregg Cohen, told the Sacramento Bee the man in that case was Kevin Neal.

Neal's mother said her son told her the neighbor was only slightly cut after Neal grabbed a steak knife she was using to threaten him.

Police had also visited Neal's house a day before the shootings on a domestic violence call, authorities said, but gave no details.

The head of the area's homeowners association said neighbors had been complaining about Neal firing guns excessively on the property, which sits at the end of a dirt road.

Neal's sister, Sheridan Orr, said she had not talked to her brother in months, but that he had struggled with mental illness and at times had a violent temper. She said she believed he was addicted to drugs.

"This is a person who has no business with firearms whatsoever," Orr said. "Our deep, deep sympathy for the victims and it sounds trite but our hearts are breaking for them."

Orr added, "If we can do any good to make people realize there must be some gates on people like this from getting guns," she paused. "This is the same story we're hearing more and more."

By JOCELYN GECKER

Photo credit: Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press