Are you a Christian? If you’re a Christian, stand up. Good. Because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second.”
A gunman stalked onto an Oregon college campus Oct. 1 and opened fire, killing nine people and wounding nine as he ordered cowering students to stand up and state their religion before shooting them one by one.
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 identified as Chris Harper-Mercer, 26, by multiple sources. It was unclear at press time whether he was shot by police or committed suicide.
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 on the day of the shooting.
Eyewitness account
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.
“(The shooter) 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.
Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said at press time, “The law enforcement investigation into the shooter and into his motivations is ongoing.” He also said three of the wounded victims were hospitalized in critical condition.
In an Internet posting on the Spiritual Passions dating and social networking site, a user posted a picture that appears to be Harper-Mercer under the user name IRONCROSS45, a handle Harper-Mercer used as his email.
On a torrent sharing website, a user using the same email linked to Harper-Mercer wrote a blog post about Vester Flanagan, the man who shot dead two reporters during a live broadcast in August before killing himself, calling the footage of the shooting “good.”
The massacre in Roseburg, a former timber town on the western edge of the Cascades some 260 miles south of Portland, was the deadliest so far in 2015, 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.
Umpqua College remained closed until Oct. 5.
(RNS)
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