Probers piece together motive of Oregon shooter
ROSEBURG (AFP) — Investigators on Saturday pieced together clues as to why a student at a college in Oregon went on a shooting rampage that left nine people dead, before committing suicide as police cornered him.
Officials said the gunman, identified as 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer, was enrolled at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg and opened fire in his English writing class.
Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said Mercer — whom he has refused to identify by name so as not to give him notoriety — exchanged fire with two officers who had rushed to the scene before committing suicide.
Mercer’s British-born father Ian, who lives in Torrance, California, said he was devastated by the killings and didn’t understand how his son managed to amass his arsenal.
“How on Earth could he compile (14) guns?” he told
CNN.
“If Chris had not been able to get hold of the guns it would not have happened.”
Hanlin said investigators were poring through numerous leads and had interviewed hundreds of people to try to determine what set off the rampage.
The mother of one of the nine people injured in the carnage said her 16-year-old daughter saw Mercer single out a student and hand him an envelope before ordering the other students to move to the middle of the classroom.
“He told him ‘you’re going to be the lucky one’ and gave him an envelope,” Cheyenne Fitzgerald’s mother told reporters. “He was going to be the one telling the story.”
The rampage took place on the fourth day of the new school year.
Witnesses said the gunman asked his victims their religion before shooting them execution-style.