Portrait emerges of US college shooter, motive a mystery

A portrait began emerging Friday of the gunman behind America's latest mass shooting -- an angry recluse with a gripe against religion -- but there were few clues to the motive for the carnage unleashed at a college in Oregon.

The rampage Thursday by a heavily armed young man identified as Chris Harper Mercer, 26, left 10 dead and shattered a close-knit rural community in the south of the state.

The bloodshed in Oregon prompted an impassioned new plea for gun control by President Barack Obama, who said Americans had become "numb" to the horror of mass shootings.

Hospital officials updated the number injured from seven to 10. The fatalities include the shooter.
Mercer's motive remained unclear.

Police have gone to the youth's home and are canvassing neighborhoods door to door as they investigate, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin told CNN Friday.

But he said it was too early to talk about why the shooter entered Umpqua Community College and methodically gunned people down one after another.

Hanlin pointedly would not call him by his name. "I don't want to glorify the shooter," he said. "You won't hear his name from me or from this investigation."

As investigators worked to put together a fuller picture of Mercer, the New York Times quoted an unnamed law enforcement official as saying, "He appears to be an angry young man who was very filled with hate."
One man whose daughter was wounded told CNN that the gunman ordered students to say if they were Christian or not.

"They would stand up and he said 'Good, because you're a Christian, you're going to see God in just about one second'," Stacy Boylan told CNN, relaying his daughter Ana's account. She survived by playing dead.

Mercer's father Ian, reached by reporters in Los Angeles, would only say he was shocked and devastated and asked to be left alone.

- 'Not Religious, Not Religious' -An online dating profile attributed to Mercer, however, describes him as "Not Religious, Not Religious, but Spiritual."

A photo with the profile shows a man with a shaved head, medium build and wearing a gray tank top shirt. The profile says he is mixed race.

In the personality section, he is depicted as "lover, conservative, professional, intellectual, introvert."

Derrick McClendon, a former neighbor of Mercer when he lived in Torrance in southern California, said the young man was so withdrawn and ill at ease that he would sometimes ask if everything was OK, the Times reported.
"I would say, 'Hey, man, you all right?'" McClendon said. "He would say 'hi,' but that's it. He was really shy," the Times quoted McClendon as saying.

Neighbors described Mercer as a withdrawn, anxious man who lived with his mother.

They told the Times he wore the same outfit every day -- combat boots, green army pants and a white T-shirt.

"He was not a friendly type of guy," Bronte Hart, who lived in the apartment below Mercer's in Winchester, Oregon, where he moved from California, told the newspaper.

"He did not want anything to do with anyone."

- Prayers not enough -In Roseburg, large crowds turned out for a candlelight vigil Thursday night at the college.

Families prayed, consoled one another and held their children tight in the chill night air.

They brought flowers and made signs and arranged candles to form the letters UCC, the college's initials.

The college draws 3,300 students from surrounding communities, so the loss was close to home for many in Roseburg.   

"Pretty much 'everybody knows everybody' type scenario," Douglas County fire marshall Ray Shufler said. "So something like this affects many, many, many people."

School shootings are a disturbing reality of American life and many facilities have reinforced security in recent years, especially in the wake of the Sandy Hook, Connecticut massacre in 2012 that left 20 students and six adults dead.

There have been 142 school shootings in the United States since that tragedy, according to data compiled by Mass Shooting Tracker.

Obama angrily renewed his call for a toughening of US gun laws, throwing down the gauntlet to lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Congress who have blocked attempts at reform until now.

"Somehow this has become routine," the president said. "It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun."

"Prayers are not enough," the stony-faced president said. "We can actually do something about it, but we're going to have to change our laws."

Source: AFP