Calls for gun control after shooter kills nine
293 mass shootings in US so far
AGUNMAN stalked onto an Oregon college campus on Thursday and opened fire, killing nine and wounding seven before police shot him to death.
The shooting in Snyder Hall at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg ranked as the deadliest in the US this year.
The suspect, who witnesses say fired dozens of shots in a classroom full of screaming students, was slain in an exchange of gunfire with two police officers, ending the rampage.
The gunman was not publicly identified by local authorities, but a law enforcement source named him as Chris Harper-Mercer. Other media said he was 26.
In a photo posted on a MySpace profile believed to be his, a young man with a shaved head and darkrimmed spectacles is seen staring into the camera while holding a rifle.
CNN reported the suspect was armed with three handguns, a “long gun” and body armour.
According to survivors, the gunman at one point ordered cowering students to stand up and state their religion before shooting them one by one.
Stacy Boylan, the father of an 18-year-old student who was wounded but survived by playing dead, told CNN his daughter recounted her professor being shot point blank as the assailant stormed into the classroom.
“He was able to stand there and start asking people one by one what their religion was,” Boylan said, relating the ordeal as described by his daughter.
“Are you a Christian? he would ask them … ‘If you’re a Christian, stand up. Good. Because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second,’ and he shot and killed them.
“And he kept going down the line doing this to people.”
Authorities offered no explanation for the gunman’s actions.
“The law enforcement investigation into the shooter and into his motivations is ongoing,” Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said.
Three of the wounded victims were hospitalised in critical condition.
Hanlin refused to name the gunman.
“I will not give him the credit he probably sought via his horrific and cowardly act,” he told reporters.
The massacre in Roseburg, some 420km south of Portland, was the latest in a flurry of lethal US mass shootings in recent years.
Thursday’s was the deadliest this year, surpassing the nine killed in a gun battle between motorcycle gangs in Waco, Texas, in May, and nine who died in the rampage of a gunman at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in June.
Not counting Thursday’s incident, 293 mass shootings have been reported this year.
The violence has fueled demands for more gun control in the US, where ownership of firearms is protected by the second amendment of the constitution.
President Barack Obama, said the mass killings should move Americans to demand greater gun controls from elected officials.
“Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here ends up being routine … We’ve become numb to this.” — Reuters