Ten
people were killed and at least seven injured by a gunman at Umpqua
Community College in Roseburg, Ore., on Thursday. Christine Mai-Duc,
Maria L. La Ganga and Matt PearceContact Reporters.
In one of the deadliest of a series of
school shootings that have become violently familiar across the U.S., a
gunman opened fire at a community college in southwestern Oregon on
Thursday morning, killing at least nine and injuring seven others before
dying in a shootout with police.
The massacre at Umpqua Community
College in this rural lumber town began when the assailant, armed with
three handguns and an assault rifle, stormed Snyder Hall and started
firing, asking students about their religion as he attacked.
A series of frantic police recordings, punctuated with the scream
of sirens, narrated the terrifying scene at the two-year college, about
180 miles south of Portland, where the school year had just begun
Monday. The chaos was apparent as ambulances were called and victims
were tallied.
A dispatcher could be heard saying the gunman was
“outside one of the doors, shooting through the doors” in the hall, with
35 people inside.
Several minutes later, an officer is heard
describing a gun battle with the assailant. “The suspect is down,”
someone shouted, while another officer called in for “as many ambulances
as possible.”
The
gunman was identified by a law enforcement official as Chris Harper
Mercer, a resident of Oregon. Mercer, 26, formerly lived with his mother
in Torrance before moving to Oregon. His father, Ian Harper, lives in
Tarzana.
"Shocked is all I can say," Harper told reporters Thursday night. "It's been a devastating day."
Mercer
is not believed to be connected to the college at this time, the law
enforcement source said, either as a student or staff member. The
gunman’s motive "is not immediately clear," he said.
Oregon
authorities have provided no details about the suspect. In a brief
evening news conference, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said the
gunman’s official identification would come from the medical examiner’s
office.
Hanlin was vehement in his resolve never to say the
shooter’s name – a stance that has grown increasingly common among those
touched by mass shootings.
“Let me be very clear,” the sheriff
said before heading to a vigil for the victims. “I will not name the
shooter. I will not give him the credit he probably sought.”
Hanlin
predicted accurately that “media will get the name confirmed in time.”
But he said in no uncertain terms that “you will never hear me use his
name.... We encourage you to not repeat it. We encourage you not to
glorify and create sensationalism for him. He in no way deserves this.
Focus your attention on the victims and the families and helping them.”
President Obama, visibly angry, laid blame on the nation’s failure to pass tighter gun laws.
“This
is a political choice that we make — to allow this to happen every few
months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who
lose their loved ones because of our inaction,” the president said.
“I
hope and pray that I don't have to come out again during my tenure as
president to offer my condolences to families in these circumstances.
But based upon my experience as president, I can't guarantee that,” he
said. “And that's terrible to say.”
The attack was among the worst
mass school shootings over the last two decades, including the one at
Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 in which 13 people were
killed; the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut in
2012, which claimed 26 lives; and the rampage at Virginia Tech in 2007,
in which 32 people were killed.
------------ FOR THE RECORD 8:25 p.m.: A previous version of this article mistakenly said 28 people were killed at Sandy Hook.
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Ana
Boylan, 18, was in her classroom when the gunman entered and shot her
professor, she recounted to family members Thursday afternoon.
Boylan,
who had started attending the college only this week, was shot in the
back, her grandmother Janet Willis said in an interview. A girl standing
next to her was shot too, Willis said.
"They just laid on the ground and pretended they were dead," Willis said.
As
Boylan lay there, she heard the gunman ask others in the classroom to
rise and state their religion, she told her grandmother. "If they said
they were Christians, they were shot again," Willis said.
A law
enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the
investigation publicly, confirmed that the gunman asked students about
their religion during the shootings.
Cassandra Welding, a
20-year-old studying early childhood education, was in a writing class
at a computer lab in the Snyder building when the shooting occurred.
Class was nearly over, and her professor had left the classroom to
retrieve some papers for students, Welding said. Moments later the
third-year student heard a noise coming from the room next door.
“It
sounded like a balloon popped … and then five seconds later I heard it
again,” she said in an interview. “We knew something wasn't right.”
When a classmate of Welding's walked to the door and opened it to peek outside, she was shot, Welding said.
“She
was halfway in the doorway, and the door was still open,” Welding said.
“We were screaming, ‘Close the door! Close the door!'”
Another
classmate dragged the woman in and locked the door and someone else
turned off the lights. Students performed CPR on the woman, who Welding
said looked as though she had been shot in the torso.
“I kept
hearing that noise, one after another,” Welding said. “I probably heard
about 40.” The students crawled along the floor, she said. Gathering in
the back right corner of the classroom, the farthest away from the door.
“I was so terrified for my life and I was shaking,” Welding recalled.
Someone
called 911. Welding got on the phone with her mother. Blood covered the
walls near the student who'd been shot, Welding said, and her broken
glasses lay on the floor.
“Hey, Mom, there's a shooting at
school,” she told her mother, whispering because she was afraid the
shooter could come in at any minute. “I just heard other people in
tears, crying, calling their loved ones and telling them, ‘I love you,'”
Welding said. “It was such a heart-wrenching thing.”
After some time, Welding said, she could hear officers bust in next door, yelling, “Get down! Get down!”
Two more gunshots rang out, Welding said. Then, nothing.
Minutes later, she said, police and SWAT
team members entered the classroom to tell them everything was OK and to
ask for the students' statements. Officers then escorted the students
to the library, where they searched their bags and patted them down. On
the way out, Welding said, she saw a woman being taken away on a
stretcher.
Her wounded classmate was still breathing when the
paramedics arrived, she said, but she still doesn't know the woman's
fate, or her teacher's.
“It's just horrific that this had to happen again,” Welding said,
noting a shooting that occurred several years ago. “The community is
such a small community and everyone's either friends or family.”
Another
student, McCrae Kittelman, was in math class in a building next door
when his professor sprinted into the room with news of the attack.
“That
was one of the most strange and disquieting parts,” Kittelman, 17, told
Fox News and others while still in lockdown. “There were no sounds at
all.”
Douglas County Commissioner Tim Freeman's 19-year-old son
was on campus when the shooting began. He said the young man was
prepared with an emergency plan — and lucky: “He immediately left
campus, went to a friend's house, to a safe location, and called me.
“We
are now in that horrible club of schools that have had to deal with
this,” Freeman said in an interview. “I hope communities around our
nation will pray for us.”
By dusk, state troopers and sheriff's
deputies had blocked off the road leading to the college, making the
school impossible to see past the hills that dominate the town. There
were no onlookers along the cordon, just a line of parked television
trucks and the glow of the lights cast toward the TV journalists who
were broadcasting live from the scene.
The college is just down
the road from a lumber mill, and the air is rich with cut timber. A sign
outside the mill notifies motorists passing by on Interstate 5: "Jesus
Saves."
Gov. Kate Brown ordered flags lowered to half-staff at all
public institutions in the state until sunset Friday in honor of the
victims.
Atty. Gen. Ellen Rosenblum lamented in a Facebook post
that “this unspeakable tragedy that occurred at 10:30 this morning,
sadly, puts Oregon on the growing list of horrendous mass shootings in
our country.”
And former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, whose
political career was ended by gunman Jared Loughner, tweeted: “On a
plane and learning about the heinous shooting in Oregon. A community's
heart has been tested but will not be broken.”
Umpqua has a
student population of about 3,300 full- and part-time students.
According to the campus website, it offers “a peaceful, safe atmosphere
and year-round recreational activities.”
The college is known for a
robust theater program and recently added a winemaking program. But the
school has also suffered strains, facing a budget shortfall of $1
million, staff layoffs and enrollment declines due to a strengthening
job market, according to the News-Review, a Roseburg paper.
Speaking
to reporters late Thursday, college President Rita Calvin said the
attack on her campus was both a “tragedy and an anomaly.”
“I feel
awful. To witness the families that were waiting for the students in the
last bus and to see all of the hugs and weeping and trauma that has
gone on,” Calvin said. “More people were hurt than just the ones that
were shot.”
Calvin said the school was not aware of any of the
rumored threatening messages the shooter may have left on social media
in recent days, and said no threats had been made against the campus
recently.
The campus employs at least one security officer, and
several faculty members are retired law enforcement personnel, according
to school officials. But none of them are allowed to be armed, she
said.
“We have a no-guns-on-campus policy,” Calvin said.
Mercy
Hospital in Roseburg confirmed Thursday afternoon that it received 10
patients and three more were on the way. PeaceHealth Sacred Heart
Medical Center at Riverbend in Springfield, Ore., tweeted that two
victims had arrived and more were expected.
Cameron Anspach, 24,
said Thursday afternoon that his family believed his brother, Treven
Anspach, 20, was on campus during the shooting.
“No one's heard
from him or anything,” said Anspach, who added that his family was
searching hospitals and the evacuation center at the county fairgrounds
where students and faculty were sent.
“We're waiting to see if he shows up,” Anspach said.
By Thursday evening, it appeared that the young man had survived but was injured.
Tweeted
Hanna Marie Harwood: “For everyone upset about Treven, I just found out
that he's up in Eugene having surgery rn! Everyone please pray for
him.”
She ended with an icon of hands in prayer. Pearce
reported from Roseburg, La Ganga from Seattle and Mai-Duc from Los
Angeles. Staff writers Richard Serrano, James Queally, Sarah Parvini,
Carla Rivera, Michael Muskal, Michael A. Memoli, Richard Winton and Ann
M. Simmons contributed to this report. end quote from:
1 comment:
Treven Taylor Anspach was the distant cousin of Emmy award winner, David Anspaugh (sic). Brave man! Well done, Treven! Rest in peace!
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