Ten people were killed and another seven injured after a 26-year-old local gunman opened fire in a classroom at a community college South Oregon at 10.30am on Thursday.
USA today spoke to a federal law enforcement source identified the gunman as Chris Mercer and he was armed with up to four firearms, including one rifle. Investigators were interviewing his mother to try and determine what caused his rampage. The gunman was shot and killed during a gunfire exchange with officers at the Umpqua Community College.
The attack – the fourth shooting at a U.S. college campus since August – prompted a visibly angry President Obama to note that the USA is “the only advanced country on earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.”
Speaking from the White House, Obama said the gunman was clearly troubled, but said, “It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun.”
Obama vowed to continue pushing new gun policies that he said would prevent further mass shootings.
“Each time this happens, I’m going to bring this up,” he said.
The Guardian UK gives some students’ account of events:
Are you a Christian?’ he would ask them, and ‘if you are a Christian then stand up’ and they would stand up. He’d say ‘because you are a Christian you’re going to see God in about one second’ and then he shot and killed them. And he kept going down the line doing this to people.
Lorie Andrews, who lives across the street from the campus, heard what sounded like fireworks and then saw police cruisers streaming in. She spoke with students as they left.
“One girl came out wrapped in a blanket with blood on her,” she said.
Some students were in tears. Police lined them up in a parking lot with their hands over their heads and searched them.
From the Mercy Medical Centre, some of the patients received have serious injuries and need to be transferred, while some are present in the ICU.
News Soucre – USA today, CNN, Guardian UK