Oregon school shooter was a self-identified ‘conservative Republican’
Telegraph reports that the gunman who was said to have been born in United Kingdom, opened fire in a science classroom at the Umpqua Community College and was armed with three handguns and what police described as a “long gun”.
Chris Harper-Mercer, the man identified as the gunman in the deadly rampage at Umpqua Community College in Oregon on Thursday, was a withdrawn young man who neighbors said wore the same outfit every day – combat boots, green Army trousers and a white T-shirt – and was close to his mother, who fiercely protected him. There were originally conflicting reports about the shooter, but MSNBC was able to confirm his identify on the night of October 1.
Jodi Sonka, a student, told CNN that her professor thought the campus was going through an active shooter drill.
The gunman, while reloading his handgun, ordered the students to stand up if they were Christians, she explained.
“And then he shot and killed them”.
Umpqua has roughly 3,300 full-time students and 16,000 part-time ones.
He established accounts on Internet dating sites, expressed anger toward religion, and, after a fired reporter killed two colleagues on live television in August in Virginia, said that the more people you kill, the more notoriety you get. “I didn’t take much notice of him”. In the aftermath of a mass shooting, a few well-meaning person-maybe a cop, maybe a relative of one of the victims-will inevitably enjoin the media to withhold the attacker’s name, in order to prevent copycat killings and deny the shooter the notoriety that he so clearly craved.
Chris Harper-Mercer apparently demanded to know his victims’ religious beliefs before opening fire if they answered they were Christian.
“He was always moving around”, Lucumi said. Its been a devastating day.
He lived with his mum Laurel Harper, a nurse practitioner, who appears to have moved to Oregon from California with her son in 2013.
“She was bawling-she was really upset”, said Ms. Hart, adding, “My heart goes to her and all the people”.
In an interview, 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer’s father, Ian Mercer, said he had no idea his son was in any way troubled.
A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone, it continued.
“I’m just as shocked as anybody at what happened”, he said.
Former neighbors in Torrance, Calif., a beach-side city just south of Los Angeles, told the Los Angeles Times that Mercer liked to practice target shooting and tended to act anxious or nervous, as Rosario Espinoza put it.
“It is a tragedy, and it’s an anomaly”, she said.
I grew up hunting, so by then I knew what it was, she told The Washington Post. “It can not be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun”.
I certainly never examined Mr. Mercer, but these details, if true, may point to conditions like schizoid personality disorder, Asperberger’s syndrome or even schizophrenia, any of which can dramatically limit the ability to socialize and empathize with others, contribute to feelings of emptiness and isolation and spawn anything from intense depression to paranoid delusions.