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 The suspect, who witnesses say fired dozens of shots in a
classroom full of screaming students, was slain in an exchange of
gunfire with two police officers in Snyder Hall at Umpqua Community
College in Roseburg, ending the morning rampage.
The gunman was not publicly identified by local authorities. A law
enforcement source named him as Chris Harper-Mercer. Other media
said he was 26.
In a photo posted on a MySpace profile believed to be his, a young
man with a shaved head and dark-rimmed eyeglasses is seen staring
into the camera while holding a rifle.
CNN reported the suspect was armed with three handguns, a "long gun"
and body armor. According to survivors, the gunman at one point
ordered cowering students to stand up and state their religion
before shooting them one by one.
Stacy Boylan, the father of an 18-year-old student who was wounded
but survived by playing dead, told CNN his daughter recounted her
professor being shot point blank as the assailant stormed into the
classroom.
"He was able to stand there and start asking people one by one what
their religion was," Boylan said, relating the ordeal as described
by his daughter. "'Are you a Christian?' he would ask them. ... 'If
you're a Christian, stand up. Good. Because you're a Christian,
you're going to see God in just about one second,' and he shot and
killed them. And he kept going down the line doing this to people."
Another student, Kortney Moore, 18, who was present in the writing
class when the gunman entered and survived unhurt, gave a similar
account to the local News Review newspaper.
'HORRIFIC AND COWARDLY ACT'
Authorities offered no explanation for the gunman's actions.
"The law enforcement investigation into the shooter and into his
motivations is ongoing," Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said at
an afternoon news conference. He also said three of the wounded
victims were hospitalized in critical condition.
Hanlin refused to name the gunman. "I will not give him the credit
he probably sought via his horrific and cowardly act," he told
reporters.
The massacre in Roseburg, a former timber town on the western edge
of the Cascades some 260 miles (420 km) south of Portland, was the
latest in a flurry of lethal U.S. mass shootings in recent years.
Thursday's was the deadliest this year, surpassing the nine killed
in a gun battle between motorcycle gangs in Waco, Texas, in May, and
the nine who died in the rampage of a gunman at a black church in
Charleston, South Carolina in June.
Not counting Thursday's incident, 293 mass shootings have been
reported this year, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker website,
a crowd-sourced database kept by anti-gun activists that logs events
in which four or more people are shot.
The violence has fueled demands for more gun control in the United
States, where ownership of firearms is protected by the Second
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and better care for the mentally
ill.
President Barack Obama, speaking just hours after the rampage, said
the mass killings should move Americans to demand greater gun
controls from elected officials.
"Somehow this has become routine," a visibly angry Obama said. "The
reporting is routine. My response here, at this podium, ends up
being routine. ... We’ve become numb to this."
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GUNSHOTS AND SCREAMS
For students at Umpqua College and the town of Roseburg, Thursday's
violence was anything but routine.
Freshman Kenny Ungerman told NBC he saw the shooter, dressed in
jeans and a T-shirt, carrying a handgun as he went into the
building, followed by gunshots and screams. Student Cassandra
Welding told CNN that she heard 35 to 40 shots.
Student Brady Winder, in a posting on Facebook, said he was in a
classroom next door and ran when he heard the gunfire.
"I ran to the edge of the campus, down a hill and waited. From
talking with a student in the classroom where it happen, almost
every person in the room was shot by a man with four guns," Winder,
23, wrote.
Survivors were transported to a local fairground by bus, and some
family members were left waiting for hours to see if their loved
ones would be among them.
"We have grief counselors waiting for those parents who have no
children getting off that bus," said the college's president, Rita
Calvin.
State and federal authorities swarmed over Roseburg, with police
descending on an apartment of the presumed suspect about 2 miles (3
km) from campus, where neighbors said they recognized him from
photos posted on social media, but they had little to say about him.
A man identifying himself as Ian Mercer, the gunman's father, spoke
briefly to a throng of media outside his home in Los Angeles
Thursday night.
"It's been a devastating day, devastating for me and my family," he
said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by local
broadcaster KNBC-TV.
Umpqua Community College, which began its fall term this week and
serves more than 13,000 students - 3,000 of them enrolled full time
- said it would be closed until Monday.
At nightfall, scores of people attended a candlelight vigil at a
municipal park, where a lone trumpeter played strains of "Amazing
Grace."
The Roseburg shooting ranks among the bloodiest on U.S. school
campuses, which have become frequent targets for such violence.
It was the deadliest at an institution of higher education since
April 2007, when a student at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg
killed 32 people and wounded 25 before taking his own life.
(Reporting by Courtney Sherwood, Eric M. Johnson and Jane Ross in
Roseburg; Additional reporting by Shelby Sebens in Portland, Sharon
Bernstein in Sacramento, Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, Katie Reilly
in New York and Daina Beth Solomon, Alex Dobuzinskis, Piya
Sinha-Roy, Steve Gorman and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by
Dan Whitcomb and Steve Gorman; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and John
Stonestreet)
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