School Dropout Questioned as Town Agonizes : Murders: The suspect tells police of his rage against a history teacher, one of the four who died in Olivehurst. Nine people were wounded.

OLIVEHURST, Calif. — As dropout-turned-gunman Eric Houston spoke with authorities, this rural farming town struggled Saturday to make sense of why the brooding young man who liked guns now stands accused of turning his deadly anger on a popular high school teacher and on students he didn’t know.

Yuba County Sheriff Gary Tindel, speaking at a Saturday press conference, said Houston waived his right to a lawyer and was talking freely to detectives. But the sheriff could offer no explanation for the rampage at Lindhurst High School except to say that Houston, 20, complained of failing to graduate and blamed teacher Robert Brens, who had flunked him in a U.S. history class in 1989.

Houston is charged with four counts of murder. He was in Yuba County jail Saturday night, with no bail set.

Brens and three students were killed in the siege that lasted 8 1/2 hours Friday. Eight other students and an adult staff member were wounded.

“It’s something we’re going to have to live with for years to come,” the somber sheriff said.

Armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle and carrying an ammunition belt over his shoulder, a gunman walked into Brens’ civics classroom and fired, leaving the 28-year-old instructor dead. He then shot randomly, killing junior Judy Davis, a student in Brens’ class.

The gunman moved to the next classroom and killed sophomore Beamon A. Hill, then continued firing as he walked down the hallway, killing senior Jason E. White. The other victims were wounded in the initial spree.

After the shooting, Tindel said, the gunman barricaded himself in a classroom and held as many as 70 students hostage.

“I don’t know how many times he shot, but he shot several times,” the sheriff said. The gunman reloaded as many as four times. While most of the shootings were random, detectives said Brens was killed intentionally.

“I think we’ll be able to show that when we go to court,” Tindel said, adding that authorities intend to press for the death penalty for Houston.

Olivehurst is a settlement of roughly 9,000 people, rusty pickups, old trailer parks, ramshackle homes and a few newer tract houses. It is surrounded by fruit and nut orchards, but locals say it’s best known for having a large number of welfare recipients.

On Saturday, a half-dozen families held yard sales. A few people milled about what passes for the downtown. The talk was of little other than the rampage.

Marysville school Supt. Peter Pillsbury described the events as “an absolute tragedy beyond any words,” and called Brens “an absolutely outstanding individual.” Brens taught civics, economics and U.S. history. He took the job in 1988 after graduating from Sacramento State University. He leaves a wife, his parents and a sister.

“We’re disciplinarians,” Pillsbury said of the teachers. “We often get students and parents upset with us.” But the superintendent added: “We have to continue to do our job and not be threatened.”

A check of Houston’s academic record showed no trace of violence and no reason why he might exact revenge on Brens for a failing grade, the superintendent said.

At Lindhurst High School, a campus of 1,200 students, someone placed a small bouquet of irises and roses Saturday outside Building C, the two-story suite of classrooms that was the scene of the carnage. The school flag flew at half-staff. Classes will not resume until at least Wednesday.

“It doesn’t affect me now, but later I’ll have nightmares,” senior Pong Vang said Saturday, standing outside the school. Vang hid out during the siege in a utility room. His brother, Tia, was a hostage. “I didn’t think something like this could happen at a small school like this.”

Some Lindhurst students were at a track meet during the incident. Others were on field trips. No matter where they were, they felt the effects of the rampage.

“I felt like crying,” said Richard Rosal, 17. He had been on a physics field trip to Great America amusement park in Santa Clara. He otherwise would have been in an English class on the upper floor of Building C.

Rosal heard the news when he boarded the bus at the end of the field trip. The teacher turned grim, asked for quiet, then gave the sad news. “Everyone just started crying,” he said. “People were thinking, ‘Why did he pick our school?’ ”

Both Rosal and Vang knew some of the students who had been shot, and both took classes from Brens. “He’s a nice teacher. He makes fun jokes. He’s serious about students. He doesn’t want anyone to flunk,” Rosal said.

At the Houston family house in Olivehurst on Saturday, a man identifying himself only as an older brother came to the door but could offer no theories on the rampage.

“This took us by surprise, like it did everybody else,” the man said. “He has always been a very quiet kid. We never expected anything like this.”

Chris Woods, a friend of Houston’s, described him as a “dead-aim shot” who often took target practice. Woods said Houston was distraught over the loss of his job and over failed relationships with women, including Woods’ sister. Woods said that on two occasions he caught Houston holding a gun to himself as if he were going to commit suicide.

During the siege, sheriff’s Capt. Dennis Moore described the gunman’s emotions as “being up and down” as he talked to hostage negotiators. Tindel said that during the standoff, the gunman told the students that he didn’t expect to make it out alive--either that he’d kill himself or that police would shoot him.

At times, an individual student would be selected to do the gunman’s bidding, either to scout the outside for police, retrieve pizza, or to pick other students who would be freed.

When students were given the task of deciding who would be freed, some of their classmates would plead: “‘Me! Me! Me!’ Everyone was anxious to get out,” said Felipe Gonzalez, a senior who was among the last to be freed.

As the hours wore on, some students cried softly to themselves, Gonzalez said. Many sat quietly, too shaken to speak.

Several of the students showed heroism. One volunteered to carry a wounded classmate to the safety of paramedics outside Building C. Two students were permitted to leave, but the healthy one was ordered to return or other students would be killed. The student returned, Pillsbury said.

Pledging the school district’s “serious determination to deal with this . . . and try to overcome it,” Pillsbury said counseling sessions were already taking place. A group of Stockton educators who suffered similar trauma in January, 1989, when a gunman angry about Southeast Asian immigrants killed five children at Cleveland Elementary School, arrived on Friday to help out with grief counseling.

Times staff writer Mark Gladstone contributed to this story from Sacramento.