The gunman who killed nine people and injured seven at Umpqua
Community College in Roseburg, Ore. Thursday before being killed by
police has been identified as Chris Harper Mercer, two law enforcement
sources confirmed to Fox News.
Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said that as of Thursday night, "we are reporting 10 fatalities in the shooting (and) seven injuries" who were transported to a local hospital and to a hospital in Eugene. Mercer was included in the death count.
Hanlin said he did not anticipate naming any of the victims for another 24 to 48 hours.
President Obama gave a brief address from the White House Thursday night, calling for a change in gun laws and warning, "we've become numb to this..it cannot be this easy for someone who wants to inflict harm on other people to get (their) hands on a gun.
The
massacre added the community college to a string of schools that have
been left grieving after mass shootings, a list that runs from Columbine
High School in 1999 to Virginia Tech in 2007 to Sandy Hook Elementary
School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children were killed in 2012.
President
Obama, in an impassioned appearance at the White House, said that grief
was not enough, and he implored Americans, “whether they are Democrats
or Republicans or independents,” to consider their representatives’
stance on gun control when they voted and to decide “whether this cause
of continuing death for innocent people should be a relevant factor.”
State
and local officials all expressed shock. Gov. Kate Brown said at a news
conference that she felt “profound dismay and heartbreak.”
The
first reports of shots came at 10:38 a.m. on what was the fourth day of
the new session. Students said they took place in Classroom 15 in a
building called Snyder that houses many English and writing classes.
Cassandra
Welding, a 20-year-old junior, was in Classroom 16, next to the
shooting, and heard several loud bursts, like balloons popping. There
were about 20 people in the classroom. A middle-aged woman behind her
rose to shut the classroom door and was struck in the stomach by several
bullets.
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