Oregon shooting: Gunman had 13 guns, all bought legally

However, a law enforcement official said a manifesto of several pages had been recovered.

According to survivors’ accounts, the gunman stormed into the classroom to shoot his professor at point-blank range, then began picking off cowering classmates one at a time as he questioned each about their religion and whether they were Christians.

Another official said the shooter, who lived with his mother, was obsessed with guns and religion and had leanings toward white supremacy.

The gunman entered her classroom and told people to get on the ground. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives provided the details of the weapons he was allegedly carrying on Thursday night in an incident report obtained by the Associated Press. Hanlin said investigators were poring through numerous leads and had interviewed hundreds of people, including neighbors and family members of the shooter, to try to determine what set off the rampage.

Hanlin didn’t say whether the gunman killed himself or was killed by police.

Randy Scroggins said his daughter survived because she was lying on the floor and partially covered by the body of a fellow student.

Lacey Scroggins told her father the gunman stepped over her and shot someone else.

In a short statement tonight, the gunman’s family said: “We are shocked and deeply saddened by the horrific events that unfolded on October 1”.

He sought to register for in 2012 or 2013 at Seven 4 Para, a private self-defense and law enforcement training academy in Torrance, but was turned away by the academy’s president and head instructor Elon Way.

Mr Scroggins also said his daughter told him Mercer had spared one student to deliver a message to the authorities.

Authorities are trying to determine a motive for the mass killing.

Harper also told her Harper-Mercer was “sickly” as a child, had “mental problems” growing up and suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome.

Harper-Mercer’s father, Ian Mercer, told CNN on Saturday that he is struggling to understand how and why the shooting happened and that he was stunned to learn his son had accumulated so many guns.

At 11:14, dispatch notified Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg that ten people were dead and six others were critically injured and needed to be transported.

Derrick McClendon, 42, another former neighbor, said Mercer was so timid and ill at ease that on occasion he would ask him if something was wrong.

The shooter served in the Army from November to December of 2008 at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, but was “discharged for failing to meet the minimum administrative standards”, the Pentagon said. The names of the nine people killed were read one by one.

He then shot himself dead during a shoot-out with police, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin confirmed today.

Bush insisted, however, that his comments had “no connection” to the Oregon shooting.

The mass shooting reflects a grim reality of USA life, with similar incidents happening on a regular basis.