Chris Harper-Mercer, a/k/a Christopher Sean Mercer
Update: Gunman was enrolled in class where fatal shootings occurred at Oregon's Umpqua Community College, sheriff says.
Nine victims were killed, the gunman died by suicide, resulting in ten deaths, and 9 others were injured.
The names of the victims are:
-- Lucero Alcaraz, 19
-- Treven Taylor Anspach, 20
-- Rebecka Ann Carnes, 18
-- Quinn Glen Cooper, 18
-- Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, 59
-- Lucas Eibel, 18
-- Jason Dale Johnson, 34
-- Lawrence Levine, 67 (the teacher of the class in which the shooter invaded)
-- Sarena Dawn Moore, 44
Reader Cory Panshin writes: "The sheriff handling the case is a Sandy Hook truther."
About 3,300 students attend Umqua Community College attend in school there full-time, and more than 16,000 attend on a part-time basis.
ABC News reported that the gunman had three handguns and a long gun.
By 9:00 PM EDT, Thursday, the Umpqua Community College shooter was identified as 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer, law enforcement sources confirm to CBS News, Fox News, NBC News, and other media.
Soon thereafter, the profiling began. He is British-born, his last name is hyphenated because it is both of his parents' surnames, he posts IRA-related images, and more. Chris Harper-Mercer, only two days before the killings, apparently downloaded the documentary Surviving Sandy Hook, as well as in the past the "conspiracy" film Lost Secrets of the Illuminati, and the "occult magazine Phenomena," says the Guardian.
The gunman, reportedly, posted online on September 30th, saying he would be shooting at a school.
A rather weird homophobic remark ["(all homosexual reddit users")] appeared on a brief initial description of the shooting on Umpqua Community College's Wikipedia page:
What does "Umpqua" mean? "Thundering waters" or "across the waters" are two popular translations for this surviving word of the Umpqua language. Another definition is "satisfied" -- as in a full stomach. Source.
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In my book, The Copycat Effect (2004), I discussed the Springfield, Oregon shooting, which took place on May 21, 1998. Two students were killed, 22 others wounded in the cafeteria at Thurston High School by 15-year-old Kip Kinkel. His parents were later found dead at home. Also,
On the same day, May 21, 1998, 200 miles due north, at the end of the school day, Miles Fox, 15, a student of Onalaska High School, Onalaska, Washington, took a young woman hostage from his bus to his home, and died by suicide from a shot to his head. As the story aired on radio and television, Ricardo Martin, 15, shot himself with a .38 caliber pistol and died on the campus of Rialto High School, in Rialto, California.
Roseburg had a previous school shooting on February 23, 2006.
Student Vincent Leodoro, 14, walked into Roseburg High School carrying a semi-automatic pistol loaded with hollow-point bullets and shot fellow student Joseph Monti four times in the back while they were in the school courtyard. Monti, then 16, survived.
