“Harper-Mercer said the person “‘was going to be the lucky one,”‘ Schaan told reporters outside a hospital where her daughter’s kidney was removed after she was shot.
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The intervention of another student, Chris Mintz, 30, a US Army combat veteran who served in Iraq, may have played a key role in preventing a higher casualty toll. Mr Mercer said he had not seen his son since he and his mother moved to Oregon about two years ago, but said there had been no “disharmony or any bitterness” between them.
Green Community Church and Lutheran Church Charities of Roseburg, Ore., pray at a memorial in front of Snyder Hall on the campus of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, October 4, 2015.
His mother, Summer Smith, told CNN her son was forced to stand by and watch the gunman shoot each of his classmates, afraid that “if he did anything to make the shooter notice him, that he would be shot”.
Downing and Lacey Scroggins are survivors of a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College.
“It’s honestly the strangest emotion I ever felt”, he said in a pre-taped segment that was broadcast on Monday’s show. I don’t know. That’s the worst part of my job.
Harper-Mercer then told the student that inside the shooter’s backpack was “all the information that you’ll need, give it to the police”, Scroggins said, citing the account by his daughter. “I don’t focus on the man. I focus on the evil that was in the man”.
Harper-Mercer killed himself after police arrived on the scene, officials said.
The shooting spree that killed eight college students and a teacher was the topic of sermons in churches throughout Roseburg on Sunday as the community tries to heal from the tragedy.
The gunman stormed into his college classroom, shot the professor in the head and then ordered students to stand up and state their religion.
However, conflicting reports emerged about Harper-Mercer’s words as he shot his victims. A few witness accounts have said that after killing people who said they were Christian he continued to execute others, doing so randomly.
Lacey says she believes she survived the shooting by playing dead next to the bleeding body of fellow student Treven Anspach, who died in the shooting.
Laurel Mercer’s friend told the New York Daily News she “wanted to get all the guns she could before someone outlawed them”.
Scroggins said the community has “come together with strength and courage and compassion”.
“We will not let ourselves be defined by violence!” he shouted, before recalling the September 11 attacks and other school massacres: Columbine, Virginia Tech and Newton, Connecticut. In Roseburg alone, there are dozens of churches, and Christian billboards and crosses dot area highways and roads.
Pastors have been at the forefront of helping victims’ families cope with a grief that can seem unbearable.
Nine other people were wounded in the attack in Roseburg, a rural timber town about 180 miles south of Portland.
The pastors also comforted parents and spouses who waited for the last bus of students. Officials notified them there would be no more buses coming.
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The traumatised young woman, who was studying nursing with a hope of eventually becoming a surgeon, told her father how ruthless the gunman was.
