Oregon shooting: Survivor ‘saved by victim’s blood’

An official says the gunman who killed nine people at an Oregon community college left a “manifesto” that was a couple pages long.

Former neighbors have identified the man in these photos as Chris Harper Mercer who went on a deadly shooting rampage at an Oregon college and died in an exchange of gunfire with police on Thursday, October 1, 2015. No one answered the phone number listed for the address, where investigators recovered two pistols, four rifles and one shotgun, in addition to six weapons the shooter took to the college.

“I’m not trying to say that is to blame for what happened, but if Chris had not been able to get hold of 13 guns it wouldn’t have happened”.

Ian Mercer, the father of the Umpqua Community College shooter, Chris Harper-Mercer, talks to reporters in a Los Angeles suburb.

“I know words can not bring families back”.

He said the NRA were “effective but don’t represent the American people”.

Harper-Mercer was enrolled in the class, but officials have not disclosed a possible motive for the killings.

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.

The daughter wiped away tears as her father told the story of how she survived as the gunman slaughtered her classmates.

Fitzgerald was struck just below her shoulder blade by a bullet that clipped her lung and lodged in her kidney, which had to be removed in surgery, her family said.

Sad journey… Students return to Umpqua Community College to retrieve their cars and belongings after last week’s school shooting.

Scroggins also said his daughter heard the gunman tell one victim he would spare that person’s life if the student begged, then shot the begging victim anyway.

Mercer’s weapons had been purchased legally over the past three years, a few by him, others by relatives, said Celinez Nunez, assistant field agent for the Seattle division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He echoed the same calls for gun control that have bitterly divided United States lawmakers and the public at large. Mercer says he had not seen his son in the past two years.

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

US President Barack Obama has cited Australia’s successful gun laws while advocating change in the wake of another mass shooting. Grieving families began to share details of their loved ones.

Meanwhile, Roseburg fire chief Greg Marlar told a press conference that the slain students included the son of a local firefighter and the niece of another. Another rescuer lost his niece.

The intervention of another student, Chris Mintz, 30, a US Army combat veteran who served in Iraq, may have played a key role in preventing a higher casualty toll.

So far the Sherif ” s office alleges that Mercer might have suffered from mental problems and could have been inspired by previous mass shootings that took place across the US.

According to data compiled by the group Everytown for Gun Safety, there have been 142 school shootings in the United States since the Sandy Hook massacre.