Police search students outside Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., Thursday, October 1, 2015, following a deadly shooting at the college.
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Sources told CBS News senior investigative producer Pat Milton the multi-page typed note was a philosophical rant of someone who was mad at the world.
“And we know beyond a shadow of any doubt that his blood on my daughter convinced the shooter that she was dead”. There is no indication that the suspect was affiliated with any group.
Bonnie Schaan, the mother of 16-year-old Cheyeanne Fitzgerald, said she was told by her daughter that the gunman gave someone an envelope.
However, the mother of another wounded student said the gunman asked his victims if they were religious but did not specifically target them if they were Christians.
According to survivors’ accounts, the gunman, who has been identified as Christopher Harper-Mercer, stormed into the classroom, shot his professor at point-blank range, then began picking off cowering classmates one at a time as he questioned each about their religion and whether they were Christians.
Moore says the man started asking people to stand up and state their religion and then opened fire. “‘Do you have a God?”
He said a woman in the room told the shooter she was sorry someone had hurt him emotionally, and to that the shooter replied, “I bet you are, but it’s not good enough”.
Officials have not given details about what happened in the classroom.
Mercer was enrolled in the class but officials have not disclosed a possible motive for the killings.
The gunman carried six guns, body armor and five magazines of bullets with him to campus. Students and faculty were bused to the fairgrounds where counselors were available and a few parents waited for their children.
Lucas Eibel, 18, was active in the Future Farmers of America and loved to play soccer.
He thanked local, state and federal agencies for their assistance in the investigation, which he said was now aimed primarily at trying “to gain an understanding [of a motive] so that we can work together with law enforcement agencies around the country to prevent this from happening again”.
Authorities confirmed the shooter, identified as Chris Harper-Mercer, handed out something during the shooting.
The shooter’s father, California resident Ian Mercer, told CNN on Saturday that he did not know that his son “had any guns, whatsoever”, and expressed shock at the number of weapons Harper-Mercer had obtained.
ROSEBURG, Ore. (AP) – The White House says President Barack Obama has been briefed by his homeland security adviser on a deadly mass shooting at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon.
“All of a sudden I heard a huge bang, it was like it was nearly in my ear”, she told her dad.
It has emerged that Harper-Mercer, who is not thought to have had a criminal history, also failed basic training for the US Army in 2008 while his social media profiles suggested he may have supported the IRA.
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All the guns were legally obtained by the shooter or family members over the past three years through a federally licensed firearms dealer, she said.
