Gunman kills nine at Oregon college, dies in shootout with police
A gunman opened fire at a community college in southwest Oregon on October 1, killing nine people and wounding seven others before police shot him to death, authorities said, in the latest mass killing to rock an American campus.
The suspect was 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.
He was not identified by authorities, who said they were still investigating his motives, 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.
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 October 5. 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.