Others weren’t as fortunate.
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Officials said they had recovered 13 weapons belonging to him, including six at the school and seven at the apartment he shared with his mother.
The father of the Oregon college gunman told CNN he “has to have a few kind of issue” with his mental health to have killed nine people execution-style and wondered how he amassed such a large cache of weapons.
Bonnie Schaan said at a news conference Saturday that her daughter, Cheyeanne Fitzgerald, told her the shooter handed an envelope to one person in the room and told that student he was the lucky one and to stand in the corner.
The gunman behind a mass shooting at an Oregon college committed suicide after a shootout with police.
Harper-Mercer fled and then shot himself, and he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Standing on his lawn, Mr Mercer said the shooting had devastated his family.
Randy Scroggins said his daughter survived because she was lying on the floor and partially covered by the body of a fellow student.
“The gunman who had shot dead nine at a community college in the USA state of Oregon Thursday killed himself on the scene as police approached, said Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin at a press briefing on Saturday”.
The condition of one of the three shooting victims brought to PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend has improved to serious from critical, the center says in a statement released Saturday night.
Although authorities have disclosed scant information about the gunman, they appeared to be learning more about him and why he might have opened fire.
Relatives of other survivors of the shooting that killed nine also said Harper-Mercer gave something to a student in the class.
A disturbing report has told how UCC gunman, Chris Harper Mercer’s mother bragged about her sick son’s arsenal of weapons.
Janet Willis told The Associated Press her granddaughter, Anastasia Boylan, was in the classroom. He said he had no idea that his son owned any firearms.
The families of the victims “deserve to know the answers”, the sheriff said.
“And then I heard the shooter say you – speaking to Lacey”. Two minutes later, they exchanged fire with Mercer and two minutes after that, they radioed “shooter down” to dispatch, according to a timeline posted to the sheriff’s office Twitter account.
Harper-Mercer was a student at Umpqua and was enrolled in English and theater classes, said Rita Cavin, interim president of the school.
“Hello everyone, I’m doing well and I’m overwhelmed by all the support I’ve gotten from everyone”, Chris Mintz, who was studying at Umpqua Community College, said.
The dead ranged in age from 18 to 67 and included several freshmen. They were sons and daughters, spouses and parents. “But he walked away with his life, and that’s more than so many other people did”.
They said he was armed with four firearms, including a rifle.
What culpability does Chris Harper Mercer mother Laurel Harper bear for her son’s mass shooting spree? His father, Ian Mercer, originally from the United Kingdom, told reporters outside his Tarzana, California, home, “I’m just as shocked as anybody at what happened”.
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It has emerged that Harper-Mercer also failed basic training for the US Army in 2008 while his social media profiles featured content supporting the IRA.
