| Washington Post | - |
ROSEBURG,
Ore. - A rural community college became the site of America's latest
mass shooting on Thursday as a lone gunman burst into classrooms during
the school day and mowed down terrified students before being shot dead
in a firefight with police, ...
Nine people dead in mass shooting at Oregon community college
Police in Oregon are responding to reports of a shooter on a rural
community college campus. Reports on social media suggested a serious
incident at Umpqua Community College. (KATU News)
Officials said nine people were killed, plus the gunman, and seven injured during the traumatic events at Umpqua Community College, about three hours south of Portland.
The gunman was described as a 20-year-old man wearing a dark shirt and jeans who spewed bullets from what appeared to be three pistols and possibly a semiautomatic rifle.
Students told of hiding between desks and huddling in darkness as the shooter methodically sought out his victims. Some military-veteran students guarded the doors, which did not lock, in case the shooter tried to enter.
“There’s a shooter! Run! Run! Get out of there!” groups of students screamed as they ran out of Snyder Hall, where the rampage apparently started, according to Kenneth Ungerman, 25, a student at the college. Ungerman and a National Guard recruiter “got underneath my Jeep, rolled on top and took off,” he said.
Jasmyne Davis, 19, was in class when the gunfire began. She said she heard one gunshot, followed by a 30-second pause, an argument and eight more shots from the classroom next door. “Close the door!” yelled a female classmate who ran out of the classroom, was shot in the arm and fell back into the room.
As authorities frantically tried to secure the campus and sort out what happened, they initially provided conflicting accounts of casualties. Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin clarified at an afternoon news conference that nine people had been killed and seven injured, with the gunman killed in an exchange of fire with police. Hanlin said authorities would not identify the victims for at least a day, possibly two.
Hanlin said the man had not been identified and that authorities were not ready to release any information about a possible motive. The News-Review newspaper in Douglas County quoted a student as saying the gunman had asked people their religion before opening fire.
The rampage was the latest in a series of mass shootings that have produced national revulsion, even as they have left Republicans and Democrats divided over whether such violence should lead to stricter gun laws. The campus shootings on Thursday came three months after nine people were gunned down at a historic African American church in Charleston, S.C.
School shootings have figured prominently in this series of tragedies, including the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings and the deaths of 20 children in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
In Washington, a visibly frustrated President Obama offered prayers for the victims and their families and quickly pivoted to repeat his call for stricter gun safety laws, something he has done throughout his presidency to no avail.
Yet again, the media broadcast images of ambulances ferrying victims to hospitals, and students reported on social media that they had been trapped inside classrooms.
Federal authorities joined officials from Oregon in swarming the rural community college. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrived in the morning, and additional agents were being dispatched. The FBI field office in Portland also said it was sending agents.
Four guns were recovered from the crime scene, including three pistols and a type of semiautomatic rifle, people familiar with the investigation said. They declined to be more specific.
Officials at Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg said the hospital had received 10 patients from the shooting. PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend, a hospital about 70 miles north of the school, said it had three female patients, one in critical condition and the other two in serious condition.
The school will be closed Friday, with its campus remaining an active crime scene, interim president Rita Cavin said at a news conference Thursday. “Today was the saddest day in the history of the college,” she said.
Umpqua, one of 17 community colleges in Oregon, has about 2,000 students and about 200 full- and part-time faculty members. Federal data suggests Umpqua is a quiet campus; the only crimes reported there in recent years have been an occasional burglary and, in 2013, an aggravated assault.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) ordered flags flown at half-staff through sunset Friday. “Today is heartbreaking for Umpqua Community College, the greater Roseburg community, and all of Oregon,” Brown said in a statement
The shooting was first reported before 10:40 a.m. local time (1:40 p.m. EDT), according to the sheriff’s office, which said students and faculty members were evacuated from campus to the county’s fairgrounds.
Danny Medak, 20, a basketball player at Umpqua, said he heard a loud noise, a pause and then a round of gunshots.
Added Ryan Rundell, 18, “I’ve lived in Douglas County my whole life and I never thought I’d see anything like this.’’
Savannah Nardli was driving to campus to meet her close friends Cheyeanne Fitzgerald and Anastasia Boylan when she got a call from another classmate who told her there had been a shooting on campus. She turned back. “I was like, ‘I’m going home,’ ” she said. “I got the hell out of town.”
Nardli tried Fitzgerald’s cellphone repeatedly but got no answer. So she called Boylan, who picked up. “She said Cheyeanne was shot and that she was bleeding,” said Nardli, 18, who is a distant cousin of Fitzgerald.
McCrae Kittelman, 17, was in the Educational Skills Building, a large open tutoring center, doing homework when his math teacher, Mike Matteo, came running in. It was 10:40 a.m.
“Drop everything you’re doing and get in the back room right now,” Matteo ordered the students. Everyone — about 20 students and three or four teachers — rushed to a back room where teachers have their offices and got in the one the farthest back. They turned off the lights. “He told us to crouch down next to anything we could, to lay and sit there quietly. Don’t make any movement or sound,” Kittelman recalled.
Mark
Berman is a reporter on the National staff. He runs Post Nation, a
destination for breaking news and developing stories from around the
country.
Jerry
Markon covers the Department of Homeland Security for the Post’s
National Desk. He also serves as lead Web and newspaper writer for major
breaking national news.
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