Oregon attacker armed with 6 guns, extra clips

Weapons legal, agents say; rampage toll 9

Douglas County Deputy Greg Kennerly (left) and Oregon State Trooper Tom Willis stand guard Friday outside the apartment building in Roseburg, Ore., where gunman Chris Harper-Mercer lived.
Douglas County Deputy Greg Kennerly (left) and Oregon State Trooper Tom Willis stand guard Friday outside the apartment building in Roseburg, Ore., where gunman Chris Harper-Mercer lived.

ROSEBURG, Ore. -- The man who opened fire on fellow students in his community college English class, killing nine people and severely wounding several others, was armed with six guns, multiple extra ammunition magazines and a flak jacket, law enforcement officials said Friday.

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Oregon Gov. Kate Brown thanks emergency personnel at a news conference Friday where Brown talked about the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College.

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Celinez Nunez, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, with Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin, said Friday that the weapons used in the Roseburg, Ore., shootings were purchased legally.

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People stop to pray at a display of candles that spelled out the initials of Umpqua Community College after a vigil Thursday.

In all, the gunman -- who died in a shootout with police -- had owned 14 firearms, said Celinez Nunez, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, including one he had traded in. The Douglas County sheriff's office said the shooter took five handguns and a rifle to Umpqua Community College in Oregon on Thursday, and he had two pistols, four rifles and a shotgun in his apartment.

"All 14 have been traced to a federal firearms dealer," some bought by the gunman and others by members of his family, said Nunez, the assistant special agent in charge of the Seattle field office. "They were all purchased legally.

"We also were able to recover a flak jacket lying next to the rifle at the school. The jacket had steel plates, along with five magazines. An additional amount of ammunition was also recovered at the apartment."

Oregon's top federal prosecutor said the shooter used one of the handguns when he opened fire on classmates. Interim U.S. Attorney Billy Williams said Friday that the gunman stashed a rifle in another room and did not fire it. He said it's impossible to know what the shooter had planned for the rifle.

Officials Friday described the shooter, identified by Oregon State Police as Chris Harper-Mercer, 26, as an alienated man who appeared to have a particular animus against religion and was an Army boot camp dropout. They said investigators were studying writings he left behind in which he described himself as angry and depressed.

"He seems to be someone who was very anti-organized religion and was suffering from all sorts of self-worth issues," said a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It does not appear like he was part of some larger group."

Also Friday, officials released the names of the dead, who ranged in age from 18 to 67 and included several freshmen and a teacher.

One of the freshmen was active in the Future Farmers of America and loved to play soccer. For another, it was only his fourth day studying at college. One was a 59-year-old student whose daughter was enrolled in the same school but not injured in the shooting.

Grieving families began sharing memories of their loved ones.

"We have been trying to figure out how to tell everyone how amazing Lucas was, but that would take 18 years," the family of Lucas Eibel, 18, said in a statement released through the sheriff's office.

Eibel, who was studying chemistry, volunteered at a wildlife center and animal shelter.

Quinn Glen Cooper's family said he had just started college and loved dancing and voice acting.

"I don't know how we are going to move forward with our lives without Quinn," the Coopers said. "Our lives are shattered beyond repair."

Authorities identified the other seven victims as Lucero Alcaraz, 19; Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, 59; teacher Lawrence Levine, 67; Jason Dale Johnson; Rebecka Ann Carnes, 18; Sarena Dawn Moore, 44; and Treven Taylor Anspach, 20.

Seven other people were wounded in the attack in Roseburg, about 180 miles south of Portland.

Family members of some survivors said their relatives told them that Harper-Mercer specifically targeted Christians. Law enforcement officials have not confirmed that.

"'Are you a Christian?' he would ask them," Stacy Boylan, father of Anastasia Boylan, 18, told CNN. "'And if you're a Christian, stand up.' And they would stand up and he said, 'Good, because you're a Christian, you're going to see God in just about one second.' And then he shot and killed them, and then he kept going down the line doing this to people."

He said his daughter was shot in the spine but survived.

Sheriff John Hanlin said Friday that it is too early to reach any conclusions.

"It is really too early to tell what the motive was," he said. "We hope to get to the bottom of that in the next couple of days."

Accounts of what happened when the gunman stormed a classroom in Snyder Hall began to emerge, often from relatives who had spoken with survivors. One of the injured, Chris Mintz, 30, was shot five times and suffered two broken legs, but he is expected to live, according to family members interviewed by television station WGHP in North Carolina, where he grew up.

Mintz "tries to block the door to keep the gunman from coming, gets shot three times, hits the floor, looks up at the gunman and says 'It's my son's birthday today,' gets shot two more times," said his aunt, Wanda Mintz, who was interviewed by the television station.

Students in a classroom next door heard several shots, one right after the other, and their teacher told them to leave.

"We began to run," student Hannah Miles said. "A lot of my classmates were going every which way. We started to run to the center of campus. And I turned around, and I saw students pouring out of the building."

Of those rushed to Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg, four underwent surgery for gunshot wounds, including one who died in the operating room, and two others were treated for less serious injuries and released, hospital officials said Friday. Three of the most seriously hurt were taken to PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene.

Umpqua Community College remained closed Friday and classes were canceled for next week.

"Right now, it is a crime scene," Rita Cavin, the interim president of the college, said.

'Kind of out there'

Those who knew the shooter described an awkward loner.

Several years ago, Harper-Mercer moved to Winchester, Ore., from Torrance, Calif., with his mother, a nurse named Laurel Harper. His father, Ian Mercer, originally from the United Kingdom, told reporters outside his Tarzana, Calif., home, "I'm just as shocked as anybody at what happened."

At school in Oregon, "he was a typical Roseburg kid, kind of nerdy, kind of out there. Just himself," said Alex Frier, a stage manager at the college who said Harper-Mercer built sets for theater performances last semester.

A neighbor, Bronte Harte, said Harper-Mercer "seemed really unfriendly" and would "sit by himself in the dark in the balcony with this little light."

At an apartment complex where Harper-Mercer and his mother once lived in Southern California, neighbors remembered a quiet and odd young man who rode a red bike everywhere.

Reina Webb, 19, said the man's mother was friendly and often chatted with neighbors, but Harper-Mercer kept to himself. She said she occasionally heard him having temper tantrums in his apartment.

"He was kind of like a child, so that's why his tantrums would be like kind of weird. He's a grown man. He shouldn't be having a tantrum like a kid. That's why I thought there was something -- something was up," she said.

The Army said Harper-Mercer flunked out of basic training in 2008.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Ben Garrett said Harper-Mercer was in the military for a little over a month at Fort Jackson, S.C., but he was discharged for failing to meet the minimum standards.

Garrett did not say which standards Harper-Mercer failed. Generally, the Army requires recruits to pass physical-fitness tests and to be in generally good physical and mental health. Recruits also must pass a multiple-choice test covering science, math, reading comprehension and other topics.

Harper-Mercer's social media profiles suggested he was fascinated by the Irish Republican Army and frustrated by traditional organized religion. He also tracked other mass shootings. In one post, he appeared to urge readers to watch the online footage of Vester Flanagan shooting two former colleagues live on TV in August in Virginia, noting "the more people you kill, the more you're in the limelight."

He may have even posted a warning. A message on 4chan -- a forum where derogatory comments against minority groups and women are frequent -- warned of an impending attack, but it's unclear if it came from Harper-Mercer.

"Some of you guys are alright. Don't go to school tomorrow if you are in the northwest," an anonymous poster wrote a day before the shootings.

Also Friday, President Barack Obama said he would make a political issue of U.S. gun violence and pressure Congress to change firearms laws.

"This will not change until the politics changes and until the behavior of elected officials changes," Obama said at a White House news conference. "The main thing I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about this on a regular basis. And I am going to politicize it. Because our inaction is a political decision that we are making."

The president, who more than a dozen times has addressed the nation in the aftermath of a mass shooting, said the response to such violence had become too routine.

"This is a political choice we make -- to allow this to happen every few months in America," Obama said Thursday after the Oregon shooting.

GOP presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Thursday on Twitter that the president was "quick to politicize this tragedy to advance his liberal, anti-gun agenda."

Another Republican presidential contender, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, questioned Friday whether the federal government should be the source of solutions to gun violence, including limiting firearms access for people with mental illness. He said that states should take the lead in such efforts.

Information for this article was contributed by Claire Cain Miller, Richard Perez-Pena and Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times; by Jeff Barnard, Martha Mendoza, Steven Dubois, Jonathan J. Cooper, Rachel La Corte, Tami Abdollah, Gosia Wozniacka, Michael R. Blood, Rebecca Boone and Eric Tucker of The Associated Press; and by Justin Sink of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 10/03/2015

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