AFP, Roseburg :
A 26-year-old man opened fire on a community college campus here in a rampage that left 10 people dead and seven wounded and turned this rural stretch of southern Oregon into the latest American locale ravaged by a mass shooting.
Students described scenes of carnage concentrated in a public speaking class that was underway in a college humanities building, and people fleeing in panic from classrooms as they heard shots ring out nearby.
The college, Umpqua Community College, went into lockdown, and the gunman died in an exchange of gunfire with police officers who responded, law enforcement officials said.
With anxious parents waiting at a fairground near the campus and the police going from classroom to classroom, authorities’ reports of the death toll varied throughout the day.
At an evening news conference, John Hanlin, the sheriff of Douglas County, said that he believed there were 10 dead, calling the toll the “best, most accurate information we have at this time.” He declined to say whether the gunman was included in the death toll.
Law enforcement officials identified the gunman as Chris Harper Mercer, and said he had three weapons, at least one of them a long gun and the other ones handguns. It was not clear whether he fired them all. The officials said the man lived in the Roseburg area.
They said one witness told them that he asked about people’s religions before he began firing. “He appears to be an angry young man who was very filled with hate,” one law enforcement official said.
Investigators are poring over what one official described as “hateful” writings by Mercer. The FBI has dispatched dozens of agents to assist in the investigation.
Hanlin said at a news conference that he would not speak the gunman’s name.
President Barack Obama, in an impassioned appearance at the White House, said that grief was not enough, and he implored Americans “whether they are Democrats or Republicans or independents,” to consider their representatives’ stance on gun control when they voted and to decide “whether this cause of continuing death for innocent people should be a relevant factor.”
A 26-year-old man opened fire on a community college campus here in a rampage that left 10 people dead and seven wounded and turned this rural stretch of southern Oregon into the latest American locale ravaged by a mass shooting.
Students described scenes of carnage concentrated in a public speaking class that was underway in a college humanities building, and people fleeing in panic from classrooms as they heard shots ring out nearby.
The college, Umpqua Community College, went into lockdown, and the gunman died in an exchange of gunfire with police officers who responded, law enforcement officials said.
With anxious parents waiting at a fairground near the campus and the police going from classroom to classroom, authorities’ reports of the death toll varied throughout the day.
At an evening news conference, John Hanlin, the sheriff of Douglas County, said that he believed there were 10 dead, calling the toll the “best, most accurate information we have at this time.” He declined to say whether the gunman was included in the death toll.
Law enforcement officials identified the gunman as Chris Harper Mercer, and said he had three weapons, at least one of them a long gun and the other ones handguns. It was not clear whether he fired them all. The officials said the man lived in the Roseburg area.
They said one witness told them that he asked about people’s religions before he began firing. “He appears to be an angry young man who was very filled with hate,” one law enforcement official said.
Investigators are poring over what one official described as “hateful” writings by Mercer. The FBI has dispatched dozens of agents to assist in the investigation.
Hanlin said at a news conference that he would not speak the gunman’s name.
President Barack Obama, in an impassioned appearance at the White House, said that grief was not enough, and he implored Americans “whether they are Democrats or Republicans or independents,” to consider their representatives’ stance on gun control when they voted and to decide “whether this cause of continuing death for innocent people should be a relevant factor.”
