By Eric M. Johnson and Courtney Sherwood
3 hours ago
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CBS News Videos
Oregon shooting victims' names released
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The nine people killed after a gunman opened fire on an Oregon community college campus Thursday took different paths to the small rural college, ranging from teens starting college for the first time to adults who were seeking a second career. One was an assistant professor of English at the college.
The worst mass shooting in Oregon history also injured several others at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. The gunman died following a shootout with police. Some family members took to social media early after news of the shooting broke, expressing concern that they hadn't yet heard from relatives. Many used that same platform to express their heartbreak once their worst fears were confirmed.
Authorities released the identities of the victims Friday.
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Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, 59, loved the outdoors, her 18-year-old daughter and her two Great Pyrenees dogs, said Robert Stryk, the owner of Pyrenees Vineyards in Myrtle Creek, where Dietz worked as a caretaker for many years.
Dietz was taking classes at the same college as her daughter, who was unhurt in the shooting, Stryk said.
"That's really the tragedy here, is that this is a woman who was just trying to better herself," he said.
Dietz's ex-husband, Eric, is the vineyard manager, and both were still close friends, Stryk said.
Eric Dietz, who had posted updates on his Facebook page while searching for news of his daughter and ex-wife, on Friday posted a picture of Kim and confirmation of her death "with deep grief in my heart."
Stryk said that the two had met in Southern California, but that Kim Dietz was originally from England.
"She was a very energetic, very kind, kind soul," he said. "Kim was an exceptional woman."
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The father of 19-year-old Lucero Alcaraz fought back tears and anger outside of his Roseburg home Friday.
"There is no sense in talking about it. It's in vain," Ezequiel Alcaraz said in Spanish. "What's the point in showing our pain?"
Lucero's sister, Maria Leticia Alcaraz, posted to Facebook that her sister was missing, then broke the news that she was dead.
"Never in a million years would I have imagined going through something like this. She was my best friend and my sister," she wrote. "I can't begin to describe how I feel. I'm full of anger, pain, sadness, regret that I didn't get the chance to see her or prevent this from happening."
Maria Leticia Alcaraz wrote of being proud of her sister for getting scholarships that would cover the entirety of her college costs, and for the fact that she was in college honors and wrote that she "would have been a great pediatric nurse."
"You were going to do great things," she wrote.
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Jason Johnson had just started his first week at the college, his mother told NBC News Friday.
Tonja Johnson Engel said that her son had struggled with drug abuse, but decided to continue his education after completing a six-month rehab program with The Salvation Army in Portland.
"The other day, he looked at me and hugged me and said, 'Mom, how long have you been waiting for one of your kids to go to college?' And I said, 'Oh, about 20 years,'" Engel told NBC News.
She said that her son kissed her before he left for class Thursday morning.
"Love ya," Engel told NBC her son told her (http://nbcnews.to/1VsXTDZ ). "I'll see you this afternoon."
In a family statement read by police Friday, Jason's mother said that Jason was proud of himself for enrolling in school, and so was his mom. They felt that Jason had finally found his path. His family says that he will be loved and missed.
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Quinn Glen Cooper of Roseburg, age 18. In a statement issued Friday, his family wrote that "Quinn was funny, sweet, compassionate and such a wonderful loving person."
"He always stood up for people," the statement reads. He was going to take his brown belt test next week, and loved dancing and voice acting and playing Ingress with his older brother, Cody.
"Our lives are shattered beyond repair," his family wrote. We send our condolences to all the families who have been so tragically affected by this deranged gunman. No one should ever have to feel the pain we are feeling. Please remember the victims and their families. Please remember Quinn."
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Lucas Eibel of Roseburg, 18. A statement by his family says that Eibel, who was studying chemistry, loved Future Farmers of America and volunteering at Wildlife Safari and Saving Grace animal shelter.
"He was an amazing soccer player," a family statement reads. His family also noted his academic achievements, including graduating Roseburg High School with high academic marks, receiving a Ford Family Foundation scholarship, and receiving an Umpqua Community College scholars award.
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Lawrence Levine of Glide, 67, was an assistant professor of English at the college. Levine was a member of Steamboaters, a fly fishing and conservation group.
Dale Greenley, a fellow member of the group said Levine was an avid fisherman who used to be a guide on the north Umpqua River.
"He was kind of quiet and laid back, he didn't say much," Greenley said. "But he was a good writer."
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Sarena Dawn Moore of Myrtle Creek, age 44, was a member of Grants Pass Seventh-day Adventist Church, which had a post on its Facebook page mourning her death.
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Treven Taylor Anspach of Sutherlin, age 20.
In a written statement read by officials, his family said that he was "one of the most positive young men, always looking for the best in life."
"Treven was larger than life and brought out the best in those around him," his family wrote.
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Rebecka Ann Carnes of Myrtle Creek, age 18. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, said that Carnes is the great-granddaughter of his first cousin. In a written statement, Merkley wrote: "Rebecka's beautiful spirit will be enormously missed."
A GoFundMe site has been set up for Carnes by her cousin, Lisa Crawford at http://bit.ly/1ON5WHD. As of Friday afternoon, the site had raised more than $1,200 to help Carnes' parents "with Becka's final expenses."
"I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to have watched Becka grow up," Crawford wrote on the site. "She had just started a new job and college classes. This isn't how life is supposed to work and I am struggling to wrap my mind around the entire situation."
Crawford asked said that the people in Carnes' life "loved her fiercely and are devastated."
"Don't let life ever become so busy that you don't have a moment to stop and be kind to someone," Crawford wrote. "Let love and gentleness shine in the wake of this violence."
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Associated Press writers Manuel Valdes and Gosia Wozniacka in Roseburg, Oregon, and Jonathan J. Cooper, in Portland, Oregon, contributed.
Slideshow: Deadly shooting at Umpqua Community College >>>
Oregon college shooting suspect Chris Harper-Mercer is seen in an undated photo taken from his Myspace …
A day after a rampage at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg that ended with 10 dead, including the gunman, and nine wounded, authorities sought a motive for the bloodiest U.S. mass shooting among the dozens reported over the past two years.
As further details of the Roseburg shooting emerged, a former girlfriend of one of the wounded survivors, a U.S. military veteran, revealed that his heroism in confronting the shooter may have saved others from being killed.
The state medical examiner on Friday confirmed that the assailant, shot dead by police, had been identified as Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, and that he was enrolled in the writing class in which Thursday's carnage unfolded.
The gunman carried six guns, body armor and five magazines of bullets with him to campus. Seven more firearms were found with a stockpile of ammunition at the apartment he shared with his mother just outside Roseburg, a former timber town about 180 miles (290 km) south of Portland.
Celinez Nunez, assistant special agent of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said all the weapons had been purchased legally.
'KIND OF A WEIRD GUY'
Harper-Mercer's preoccupation with firearms dated back at least to 2012 or 2013, when he sought to register for training at Seven 4 Para, a private self-defense and law enforcement academy in Torrance, California, where he lived at the time, said Eloy Way, president and head instructor for the center.
"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 recalled. "He was a little bit too anxious to get high-level training, and there was no reason for it."
Way's concerns that Harper-Mercer might misuse the training he would receive at the academy proved prescient.
The gunman stormed into his college classroom, shot the professor in the head and then ordered cowering students to stand up and state their religion, asking if they were Christian, before shooting them one by one, survivors said.
The intervention of another student, Chris Mintz, 30, a U.S. Army combat veteran who served in Iraq, may have played a key role in preventing a higher casualty toll.
As the gunman moved toward an adjoining classroom, Mintz tried to stop him, according to Jamie Skinner, Mintz's former girlfriend and the mother of their 6-year-old son. The gunman opened fire, striking Mintz.
On the ground bleeding, Mintz pleaded with the shooter, telling him it was his son's birthday, but the gunman fired additional rounds, Skinner recounted, adding that the gunman then changed direction and entered a different room.
"The assailant was not able to make it into the classroom, because Chris stopped him," she said, adding that Mintz was hospitalized with two broken legs and seven bullet wounds.
RENEWED GUN DEBATE
The Oregon shooting, the latest in a series of high-profile mass killings across the country, has led to fresh demands for stricter gun control in the United States, including an impassioned plea by Democratic President Barack Obama for political action, and statements by some Republican presidential candidates supporting the right of Americans to bear arms.
Among those to have championed the gun rights cause in the past was Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin, who has refused since the shooting to comment on the debate and has repeatedly declined to name the Roseburg gunman during news conferences.
"Media and community members who publicize his name will only glorify his horrific actions," Hanlin said. "And eventually, this will only serve to inspire future shooters."
The sheriff on Friday identified the dead as Lawrence Levine, 67, the professor, and eight others who are believed to have been his students: Quinn Cooper, 18; Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, 59; Lucas Eibel, 18; Jason Johnson, 33 or 34; Sarena Moore, 44; Treven Anspach, 20; and Rebecka Carnes, 18; and Lucero Alcaraz, 19.
FRAGMENTED PICTURE EMERGES
Authorities have disclosed little information about the gunman or his 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.
Hanlin declined to comment when asked about the writings at a press conference.
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.
His parents, Ian Mercer and Laurel Harper, divorced in Los Angeles in 2006 when he was a teenager, public records show, and he continued to live with his mother.
Harper-Mercer, who identified himself as "mixed race" on a social networking site, enlisted in the U.S. Army and served for about a month in 2008 before being discharged for failing to meet administrative standards, military records showed.
He graduated from the Switzer Learning Center in Torrance, in 2009, a graduation listing in the Daily Breeze newspaper showed. Switzer is a private, nonprofit school geared for special education students with learning disabilities, health problems and autism or Asperger Syndrome, the school says on its website.
At some point, Harper-Mercer appears 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.
Not counting Thursday's incident, 293 U.S. mass shootings have been reported this year alone, 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 U.S. Navy reservist working as a government contractor killed 12 people before he was slain by police at the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard. About 80 shootings have occurred across the country since then that claimed at least four lives each.
Gun control advocates say easy access to firearms is a major factor in the shooting epidemic, while the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun advocates say the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees Americans the right to bear arms.
Among those critical of efforts to enact tougher gun control measures has been Sheriff Hanlin.
A month after the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, he wrote a sharply worded letter to Vice President Joe Biden saying he would never enforce a federal law that violates the Constitution.
"Gun
control is NOT the answer to preventing heinous crimes like school
shootings," Hanlin wrote in the letter, dated Jan. 15, 2013.
(Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Doina Chiacu
in Washington, Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, Jane Ross in Roseburg,
Shelby Sebens in Portland, and Katie Reilly and Angela Moon in New York;
Writing by Barbara Goldberg and Steve Gorman; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
and Clarence Fernandez)
Oregon community college gunman sympathized with Virginia TV shooter, shared Newtown school shooting documentary
“Yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are,” the gunman recently blogged.
Suspected Oregon gunman Chris Harper-Mercer's profile on the dating site Spritual Passions (screen shot).
“People like him have nothing left to live for, and the only thing left to do is lash out at a society that has abandoned them,” Harper-Mercer wrote in a blog post on Aug. 31. “His family described him as alone, no partner/lover.
“On an interesting note, I have noted that so many people like him are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are. A man who was known by no one is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”
Authorities in Roseburg, Ore., have not speculated why 26-year-old Harper-Mercer killed nine at Umpqua Community College before dying in a shootout with police officers. Seven other people were wounded, including three who remained in critical condition Thursday evening.
An agitated Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin offered little detail about the gunman at a news conference Thursday evening.
“I will not name the shooter. I will not give him the credit he probably sought prior to this horrific and cowardly act,” Hanlin said before declining to take questions.
Investigators searched an apartment Thursday evening where the suspected gunman lived with his mother about two …
Ian Mercer, the gunman’s father, refused to answer reporter’s questions outside his home in Tarzana, Calif., but called it a “devastating day” for him and his family.
The shooter’s stepsister said the tragedy made no sense.
“I’m shaking right now,” she told reporters. “He meant a lot to me. He was a nice guy, and he put everyone before himself ... it doesn’t sound right. All he ever did was put everyone before himself. He wanted everyone to be happy.”
School officials have not said if the shooter was a student, but a Tuesday post on the Facebook page of the college's theater group announced that a Chris Harper-Mercer had been picked as a production assistant for an upcoming play.
A Chris Harper-Mercer was recently picked to be a production assistant in an upcoming play at Umpqua's school theater. …
Harper-Mercer’s disdain for organized religion was evident in his social media posts and profiles. He also used the screen name “IronCross45” and had a dating profile at the site spiritualprofiles.com, where he listed his interests as the “internet, killing zombies, movies, music, reading.”
Slideshow: Deadly shooting at Umpqua Community College >>>
“Not Religious, Not Religious, but Spiritual,” he answered about himself on the site. As for a partner, he said “Pagan, Wiccan, Not Religious, but Spiritual” were qualities he desired.
The dating forum indicates Harper-Mercer had not been on the site in more than three months.
But the former California resident was very active on the torrent upload site where he shared the BBC film “Surviving Sandy Hook.” In addition to file sharing, the site has blogs, Q&As and other forums.
His first blog post, titled “The material world is a lie,” was published to the site 20 days before his birthday in July.
“For so long we have been taught that what’s important in life is to buy this and have that,” he wrote. “To always have the latest fashion, biggest tv, fanciest car, nicest house, and blah, blah, blah. Well, the truth is we’ve become so attached to these things, our spiritual development has been halted. … This attachment produces so much of the stress and worrying in the world today.”
Authorities reportedly recovered three handguns and a rifle that were apparently used in Thursday’s rampage.
This year, Oregon became one of only 18 states that require mandatory background checks for all gun sales. Public records don’t indicate Harper-Mercer had a previous criminal history. In an undated photo on his MySpace profile, he is posed holding a rifle.
On Tuesday, Harper-Mercer answered a discussion thread asking: “How many girlfriends you have had?”
“0,” he wrote. “Never had anyone.”
The day before the shooting, a poster replied to him in the thread saying, “You must be saving yourself for someone special. In due time then...”
“Involuntarily so,” Harper-Mercer responded.
(This story has be updated since it originally published.)
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Jason Sickles is a national reporter for Yahoo News. Follow him on Twitter (@jasonsickles).
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