‘Numerous fatalities’ in US school shooting, suspect in custody

PARKLAND, United States — Authorities in Florida could offer no explanation Wednesday night as to why a former student armed with an AR-15 rifle opened fire at a high school earlier that day, killing at least 17 people.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel identified the gunman as Nikolas Cruz, 19, a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland who had been expelled for “disciplinary reasons,” but was currently enrolled in Broward County Public Schools.

Cruz, whose fellow students described him as “troubled,” was arrested without incident in the nearby town of Coral Springs after the Valentine’s Day rampage and taken to hospital with minor injuries, the sheriff said.

“We have already begun to dissect his websites and things on social media that he was on and some of the things… are very, very disturbing,” Israel said.

“If a person is predisposed to commit such a horrific event by going to a school and shooting people … there’s not anybody or not a lot law enforcement can do about it.”

Israel said both students and adults had been killed, 12 of whom have now been identified.

He said at least 14 were taken to hospital and two had died there of their wounds. He added one of those killed was a football coach, and one student injured was a deputy sheriff’s son.

“This is a terrible day for Parkland,” Israel said, speaking of the city of about 30,000 people, located 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Miami.

A teacher at the school said Cruz had been identified previously as a potential threat to his classmates.

“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” math teacher Jim Gard said in a Miami Herald interview.

“There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”

Cruz was also said to have been in the Junior ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) program while at school.

A law enforcement source told CBS News that the gunman pulled a fire alarm before opening fire, but Israel could not confirm that report.

‘Everyone started running’
The shooting, one of nearly 20 at a school since the start of the year, will once again throw the spotlight on the epidemic of gun violence in the United States, where there are 33,000 gun-related deaths annually.

But when questioned at a press conference late Wednesday, Florida Governor Rick Scott — who described the massacre as “just pure evil” — declined to make a statement on gun control in the aftermath of the shooting.

“There’s a time to continue to have these conversations about how through law enforcement, how through mental illness funding that we make sure people are safe, and we’ll continue to do that,” said Scott, a Republican.

At the same briefing, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said the state will cover the costs of funerals and counseling for survivors.

“We will continue to work together as a team, as a family, and love and take care of all of these victims and their family members,” she said.

Parkland Mayor Christine Hunschofsky told CNN she had spoken to a number of students after the shooting erupted shortly after 2:00 pm (1900 GMT).

“They were very scared,” she said. “And almost in shock when they came out.”

Students, some with their hands in the air, were led out of the school by heavily armed police officers and an armored vehicle filled with a SWAT team on the scene.

Student Jeiella Dodoo told CBS News that she and her schoolmates evacuated calmly after hearing what they thought was a routine fire alarm.

“The alarm went off so we had to evacuate from our classes,” she said. “Then we heard gunshots.

“I heard about six gunshots,” she said, “and then some people started running and then everyone started running because we were like ‘If it’s real, then just run.'”

Teacher Melissa Falkowski told US networks that she had helped 19 students squeeze into a closet with her.

“We were in there for probably 40 minutes. We were locked in the closet until SWAT came and got us,” she told CNN.

Police officers in helmets, bulletproof vests and armed with automatic weapons could be seen stationed at several points around the sprawling school complex, which serves nearly 3,000 students.

“Just a horrible day for us,” said the superintendent of the county’s school district, Robert Runcie.

“This is very sad to me and our family too,” 61-year-old Joseph Panikulangara, whose 17-year-old niece Dhiya attends the school, told AFP.

The FBI said it was assisting local law enforcement with the investigation.

When asked about security, Hunschofsky said a police officer is always stationed at the school and there is a “single point of entry.”

No child should ‘feel unsafe’

President Donald Trump offered his “prayers and condolences to the families of the victims.”

“No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school,” he said on Twitter.

But since January 2013, there have been at least 291 school shootings across the country — an average of about one a week, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit group that advocates for gun control.

“It is pretty clear that we’re failing our kids here,” said Falkowski, the teacher who helped shield her students from harm in a closet. /cbb

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Gunman in Oregon massacre was turned away from firearms academy

ROSEBURG, Ore. - The gunman slain by police after he killed his English professor and eight others at an Oregon college was once turned away from a firearms academy by an instructor who recalled finding him "weird" and "a little bit too anxious" for high-level weapons training.

Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, who moved to Oregon from the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance, California, was officially identified on Friday as the assailant in the rampage at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, which ranks as the deadliest among dozens of US mass shootings in the past two years.

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

Harper-Mercer had a month-long stint in the Army in 2008 and a preoccupation with weaponry that dated back at least two years.

He sought to register for training in 2012 or 2013 at Seven 4 Para, a private self-defense and law enforcement training academy in Torrance, but Eloy Way, president and head instructor for the center, said he sent Harper-Mercer away.

"We wanted him to take a beginner safety course and he was trying to tell me that he already had experience with firearms and I didn't get a good feeling about him, so I turned him down," Way told Reuters.

"He was just kind of a weird guy and seemed kind of spoiled, immature," Way said. "He was a little bit too anxious to get high-level training and there was no reason for it."

Authorities have disclosed little of what they may know about the gunman's motives.

The shooter left behind a "multipage, hated-filled" statement in the classroom, according to a Twitter message from an NBC reporter, citing multiple law enforcement sources who were not identified. CNN, citing sources, said the statement showed animosity toward blacks.

Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin, who has vowed never to say the gunman's name, declined to comment when asked about the writings at a news conference.

Interest in IRA

Harper-Mercer was born in the United Kingdom and arrived in the United States as a boy, his stepsister Carmen Nesnick told CBS Los Angeles.

Harper-Mercer, who identified himself as "mixed race" on a social networking site, enlisted in the US Army and served for about a month in 2008 before being discharged for failing to meet administrative standards, military records showed.

At some point, Harper-Mercer appeared to have been sympathetic to the Irish Republican Army, a militant group that waged a violent campaign to drive the British from Northern Ireland. On an undated Myspace page, he posted photos of masked IRA gunmen carrying assault rifles.

Harper's victims were identified as assistant English professor Lawrence Levine, 67, and eight people believed to be his students: Quinn Cooper, 18; Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, 59; Lucas Eibel, 18; Jason Johnson, 33; Sarena Moore, 44; Treven Anspach, 20; and Rebecka Carnes, 18; and Lucero Alcaraz, 19.

Nine more people were wounded, three critically, before Harper-Mercer was killed in an exchange of gunfire with two police officers.

One of those wounded, Chris Mintz, 30, a US Army veteran who served in Iraq, was credited with likely saving lives when he confronted the gunman outside another classroom before police arrived. Mintz drew fire that left him with seven bullet wounds and two broken legs, according to his former girlfriend.

So far this year, 294 US mass shootings have been reported nationwide, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker website, a crowd-sourced database kept by anti-gun activists that logs events in which four or more people are shot.

The Roseburg shooting ranks as the deadliest bout of gun violence since September 2013, when a former US Navy reservist working as a government contractor killed 12 people before he was slain by police at the Washington, DC, Navy Yard. About 80 shootings have occurred across the country since then that claimed at least four lives each.

The Oregon shooting has led to fresh demands for stricter gun control in the United States, including an impassioned plea by President Barack Obama for political action, and statements by some Republican presidential candidates supporting the right of Americans to bear arms under the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution. — Reuters

Gunman kills 9 at Oregon college, dies in shootout with police

ROSEBURG, Oregon - A gunman burst into a community college in southwest Oregon on Thursday and opened fire, killing nine people and wounding seven others before police shot him to death, authorities said, in the latest mass killing in America.

The suspect, who witnesses say fired dozens of shots into a classroom full of screaming students, was then slain in an exchange of gunfire with police in Snyder Hall at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg following the rampage shortly after 10:30 a.m. local time (1730 GMT).

He was not identified by local authorities but CBS, CNN and NBC named him as 26-year-old Chris Harper, citing anonymous law enforcement sources.

CNN reported that three handguns and a "long gun" belonging to him were recovered from the scene.

The massacre in Roseburg, a former timber town in Umpqua River Valley, is the latest in a series of mass shootings at US college campuses, movie theaters, military bases and churches in recent years. It marked the deadliest since a shooting rampage in June at a South Carolina church that killed nine.

The killings have fueled demands for more gun control in the United States, where ownership of firearms is protected by the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, and better care for the mentally ill.

 President Barack Obama, speaking just hours after the rampage, said the mass killing should move Americans to demand greater gun controls from elected officials.

"Somehow this has become routine," a visibly angry Obama said. "The reporting is routine. My response here, at this podium, ends up being routine. ...We've become numb to this."

Kortney Moore, 18, told the local News Review newspaper that she was in her writing class in Snyder Hall when a gunshot came through the window and struck her teacher in the head.

Moore said the gunman told people to get on the ground, then asked them to stand up and state their religion before he started shooting.

Freshman Kenny Ungerman told NBC that said he saw the shooter, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, carrying a handgun as he went into the building, followed by gunshots and screams. Student Cassandra Welding told CNN that she heard 35 to 40 shots.

Student Brady Winder, in a posting on Facebook, said he was in a classroom next door to the room where the shooting began and ran, along with his classmates, when they heard the gunfire.

"I ran to the edge of the campus, down a hill and waited. From talking with a student in the classroom where it happen, almost every person in the room was shot by a man with four guns," Winder, 23, wrote.

"I'm still shaken up ... I can't wrap my mind around this. Please just pray for the families and parents of these students," he posted.

Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said three of the shooting victims were listed in critical condition on Thursday evening.

PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center emergency room doctor Hans Notenboom told reporters three women between the ages of 18 and 34 were flown to the hospital in Riverbend by helicopter, and two were moved directly into operating room.

Survivors were transported to a local fairgrounds and some family members were left waiting for hours to see if their loved ones would be among them.

"We have grief counselors waiting for those parents who have no children getting off that bus," said the college's president, Rita Calvin.

Following the bloodshed a convoy of state and federal authorities descended on Roseburg. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were on their way to Roseburg.

Police descended on an apartment about 2 miles (3 km) from the campus possibly linked to the suspect, where police tape prevented access. It was not immediately clear who lived in the residence.

The college, which began its fall term this week and serves more than 13,000 students, 3,000 of them full-time, said it would be closed until Monday. A candlelight vigil was scheduled for nightfall.

In 2012, seven students at the small Christian college Oikos University in Oakland, California, were shot dead by a former student, marking the deadliest outburst of violence at a US college since April 2007, when a student at Virginia Tech University killed 32 people and wounded 25 others before taking his own life. —Reuters

Teen gunman in Oregon school shooting got weapons from home

TROUTDALE, Oregon - The teenage gunman who killed a classmate at an Oregon high school on Tuesday was armed with a military-style rifle and a semiautomatic pistol obtained from his home and lacked any known connection to his victim, police said on Wednesday.

Police said an autopsy of the suspect, Jared Michael Padgett, 15, confirmed that he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after exchanging fire with police inside Reynolds High School in Troutdale, a Portland suburb.

The shooting, which ended with Padgett's body being found in a bathroom stall of the gymnasium building, marked the third outbreak of deadly gun violence to shake a US high school or college campus in less than three weeks.

Troutdale Police Chief Scott Anderson declined at a news conference to offer an explanation for what may have driven Padgett to walk into a boy's locker room and shoot a fellow freshman, 14-year-old Emilio Hoffman.

"We have not established any link between the student and shooter," Anderson said. "At this time it would be inappropriate to discuss a motive."

But he credited a school gym teacher, Todd Rispler, with preventing further loss of life. Rispler was grazed by gunfire as he encountered Padgett but made his way to the school office to warn administrators of the attack and initiate a lockdown, Anderson said.

Anderson said Padgett opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle and also was carrying a semiautomatic handgun that he did not use, as well as a large knife and nine loaded ammunition magazines with a capacity for several hundred rounds.

The youth arrived at the school on Tuesday morning by school bus, carrying a guitar case and a duffel bag. When confronted in the locker room by the teacher, the boy wore a vest used for carrying ammunition and other items and a camouflage-colored athletic helmet, Anderson said.

"The shooter obtained the weapons from his family home," the chief said. "The weapons had been secured, but he defeated the security measures."

Police have not said whether the firearms were legally owned or registered by family members.

A statement released by Hoffman's family described him as an avid soccer player who also enjoyed science and history and whose laughter was infectious. "You couldn't be around Emilio without laughing," his mother, Jennifer, wrote.

The Portland Oregonian newspaper reported that Padgett was active in the Mormon church as well as the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, with a strong interest in guns and aspirations to follow his older brother into the military.

One fellow member of his JROTC class, Agustin Guzman, 16, told the newspaper that Padgett had a rigid side.

"He was one of those organized people who liked order, liked everything to be really perfect," he said, recounting that Padgett became "really irritated if we messed up" when folding the American flag.

Another friend, Kaylah Ensign, recalled Padgett losing his temper when others disagreed with him during a class presentation on a book he read about Adolf Hitler. —Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com