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Oregon shooter came from California, described as shy and skittish
A law enforcement source said multiple agencies had identified the shooter as Chris Harper-Mercer. Online directories list a man of that name as having lived in Torrance, California, before moving to Winchester, Oregon.
- PUBLISHED: Fri 2 Oct 2015, 1:06 PM UPDATED: Fri 2 Oct 2015, 3:12 PM
The man killed by police on Thursday after he fatally shot nine people at a community college in southern Oregon was a nervy 26-year-old who lived close to the campus and described himself as shy, according to neighbors, media and online reports.
A law enforcement source said multiple agencies had identified the shooter as Chris Harper-Mercer. Online directories list a man of that name as having lived in Torrance, California, before moving to Winchester, Oregon.
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Reuters was not able to independently verify the name of the shooter, but on Thursday night law enforcement officers were out in force at the Winchester apartment building identified in databases as Harper-Mercer's residence.
Two neighbors said they recognized online photos of Harper-Mercer as a man from the apartment building. A phone number listed for the address was busy.
The killer used four guns, including a type of assault rifle, in the classroom attack, CNN said. Seven people were also wounded at the Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, a timber town of about 20,000 people that adjoins Winchester.
A photo posted on a MySpace profile belonging to someone named Chris Harper-Mercer, from Torrance, showed a young man with a shaved head, dark-rimmed glasses and a serious expression. He was holding a long-barreled gun.
A neighbor next door to the Winchester building said on Thursday night he recognized online photos of Harper-Mercer as being his neighbor.
A neighbor also recognized online photos of Harper-Mercer as being a man he knew from the neighborhood.
The same email address linked to a Chris Harper-Mercer was also associated with the profile of user Lithium Love on torrent sharing website KickAssTorrents.
The user wrote a blog post on the site about Vester Flanagan, the man who shot dead two reporters during a live broadcast in August before killing himself, calling the footage of the shooting "good".
"On an interesting note, I have noticed 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," the post said.
The user's last torrent upload was on Tuesday and was entitled "This World Surviving Sandy Hook BBC Documentary 2015," according to the website.