He explained that he couldn’t even imagine why this individual did what he did, but he can obviously say that anybody who could do this has a sickness in his mind.
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Lacey Scroggins’ father, Pastor Randy Scroggins, told The Associated Press his daughter also told him about students being ordered to crawl to the middle of the room and the gunman shooting them.
“I’ll miss her making fun of me when I would attempt to say the Starbucks cup sizes, getting pissed when I would tackle her with kisses or photograph the heck out of her”, her sister wrote. Fisher said the suspect seemed wary of others, often looking over his shoulder, and didn’t mingle with anyone besides the two children he often took out to the playground in the evenings to push on the swings.
The gunman entered her classroom and told people to get on the ground.
Harper-Mercer is not thought to have had a criminal history. Most, like those who spoke to the New York Times, describe him as reclusive and extremely close with his mother, with whom he lived in small apartments in both places.
The grandmother, Janet Willis, said her granddaughter Anastasia Boylan was wounded in the Thursday attack and pretended to be dead as Harper-Mercer kept firing, killing eight students and a teacher. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day.
Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley says he’s “absolutely heartbroken” about the shooting. “If Chris had not been able to get hold of (14) guns it would not have happened”.
“He didn’t really, honestly”, McGowan said in a quiet voice while standing on the doorstep of his house in Roseburg, Oregon, on Saturday morning. Hanlin noted that police officers were five miles away from the campus.
She was one of 87 students who qualified to become UCC Scholars, according to a release from the college.
Sheriff John Hanlin made the disclosure Saturday at a news conference.
U.S. media said Mercer left behind a typed statement several pages long in which he indicated he felt lonely and was inspired by previous mass killings.
The official did not reveal the contents of the document but described it as an effort to leave a message for law enforcement.
Although authorities have disclosed scant information about the gunman, they appeared to be learning more about him and why he might have opened fire.
Two officials said that after the shooting, the gunman’s family told investigators that he suffered from mental health issues and had sought treatment.
Investigators have shed very little light publicly on Mercer’s possible motive for the shooting.
The shooting left seven other people wounded, according to authorities.
Seven people were hospitalised, three of them listed as critical. “‘Are you a Christian?’ he would ask them….”
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Bronte Hart, a neighbour in Harper-Mercer’s community of Winchester, said he would “sit by himself in the dark in the balcony with this little light”.
