Anastasia Boylan, 18, was in a class when Harper Mercer came in shooting, her father Stacey Boylan told CNN. He’d say “because you are a Christian you’re going to see God in about one second” and then he shot and killed them.
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According to CBS News, the gunman responsible for killing 9 people and wounding at least 7 others at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg has been identified as 26-year-old Christopher Harper Mercer. One law enforcement official described Mercer to The New York Times as appearing to be “an angry young man who was very filled with hate”. Rick Santorum, R-PA, who is now a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, recently stirred controversy for evoking the Columbine High School shooting to make a point about religious liberty for U.S. Christians. Selecting which facts to share is no way to build confidence in an investigation or to foster true debate – both of which are critical in any effort to stop what has become nauseatingly routine.
Initial reports spoke of as many as 13 victims and 20 injured, as stated by Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, before Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin confirmed that 10 people had died and seven were injured. So refusing to say the shooter’s name to strip him of the celebrity he might have envisioned feels like a tiny victory in an ocean of loss.
His father, Ian Harper, still lives in Los Angeles.
The president chastised those who he said opposed “common sense gun legislation”. It’s unclear why being a “self proclaimed “mixed race” person would necessarily be a bad thing, but apparently Zimmerman has a problem with people of “mixed race” – after all, he clearly associates them with “piece[s] of shit” who shoot up community colleges.
Authorities said investigators were examining social media postings thought to belong to the shooter. “He said he had no life”, an official told NBC News.
Another mass shooting in the United States has sent dozens to hospital and possibly killed up to 15 people. In a ritual that has repeated itself many times in other places over the past few years, people gathered at the Douglas County Fairgrounds where evacuees from the school had been taken to meet their families.
The campus did have a security guard, but the guard was unarmed.
“Most of us have relatives taking classes here”, he said. My grandma just got to my house, and she was in the room.
The picturesque campus sits on a hill in a logging community, which is fairly rural but easily accessible from Interstate 5.
“I looked over outside, and people were running away from the building, so I knew exactly what had just happened”, she said.
On the internet his blog documents an interest in mass shootings including a recent post about the gunman who killed two USA journalists live on air in August. “They lost their child tonight, too”.
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Kristen Sterner, left, and Carrissa Welding, both students of Umpqua Community College, embrace during a candle light vigil for those killed during a fatal shooting at the college, Thursday, in Roseburg, Ore.
