13 Killed in Shooting at Oregon's Umpqua Community College: Officials
Source: nbcnews.com
At least 13 people were dead and more than 20 others were injured after a gunman opened fire Thursday morning on the campus of Umpqua Community College in southwest Oregon, authorities told NBC News.
The gunman was killed in a firefight with Douglas County sheriff's deputies, Sheriff John Hanlin said. State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum told NBC News that 13 people were dead after the events near Roseburg, where the shootings were called in at 10:38 a.m. (1:38 p.m. ET).
No officers were injured, said Hanlin, who said: "It's been a terrible day."
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown described the gunman as a 20-year-old man and said she was immediately traveling to Roseburg, in the southwest corner of the state about 60 miles south of Eugene.
"Our top priority now is the medical treatment of the victims and the security of the campus," said Brown, who expressed "profound dismay and unimaginable heartbreak."
The FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Marshals Service all joined numerous state and local agencies at the scene.
Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg said it was treating nine patients and was expecting four more. Sacred Heart General Hospital in Eugene, a major trauma center, told NBC News it was expecting three patients by helicopter.
Students told NBC News that the shootings occurred in a classroom building called Snyder Hall.
"I was walking into class, and I heard what sounded like a car backfiring," Courtney Rennie, 23, second-year human services student, told NBC News.
"You don't even think that's somebody shooting a gun," Rennie said, but "I kept envisioning someone is going to come around the corner and and shoot the windows out."
Another Umpqua student, Larry Howell, was on his way to class when he saw students running around him, he told NBC News.
"I turned around. I heard 'active shooter,' and I didn't need to be told twice," he said.
Howell said he checked in with his friends to make sure they were safe.
Students outside Umpqua Community College
"Everybody is reaching out to one another and checking on everyone. We don't know which one of our colleagues are down," he said.
Umpqua is a two-year school with about 3,300 full-time students and 16,000 part-time students. It started offering classes in 1961.
In a joint statement, the American Association of Community Colleges and the Association of Community College Trustees said called the shootings a "tragedy" and said they were committed to on-campus safety and security.
But "while campus safety is of the utmost priority, due to their open nature, college and university campuses are susceptible to these types of events," the organizations said
Source: nbcnews.com
