US SCHOOL SHOOTING: Up To 13 Killed; 20 Hurt By Shooter At Ore. Community College

A patient is wheeled into the emergency room at Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg, Ore., following a deadly shooting at Umpqua Community College, in Roseburg.(Photo: Aaron Yost, Roseburg News-Review via AP)

As many as 13 people were killed and 20 injured Thursday when a shooter opened fire in a classroom at a community college in southern Oregon, according to Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenbaum. The attorney general said the shooter was killed in the melee at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Ore., KGW-TV reports.

“It is believed there is only one shooter who is no longer a threat,”  Oregon State Police said in a statement. “There is no current threat to the community.”

A witness at the scene in Roseburg said the male shooter was shot by police and was acting alone, according The Register-Guard  of Eugene. The report could not be immediately confirmed.

USA Today report continues:

Mercy Medical Center, a hospital in Roseburg, said it had received nine patients and expected three more.

Roseburg Police Sgt. Aaron Dunbar told USA TODAY that the incident was contained to one classroom on the sprawling campus.

Six agencies—the Douglas County Sheriff's Department, Oregon State Police, Bureau of Land Management officers as well as police officers from Roseburg, Sutherlin, and Winston — responded to the scene after getting a rush of 911 calls reporting the mass casualty shooting.

Police received a call of an active shooter in a classroom at the college around 10:30 a.m., local time, according to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office.

"Active shooter at UCC. Please stay away from the area," Fire District No. 2 that serves Douglas County said on Twitter.

According to The Oregonian/oregonlive.com, a 911 call came in at 10:37 a.m. local time.

"UCC this is going to be the Snyder hall,": the caller said. "The...somebody is outside one of the doors shooting through the door there is a female in the computer lab. We do have one female that has been shot at this time. We're still (incomprehensible) to get further."

Umqua Community College English Professor Jillanne Michell said the shooting erupted in Snyder Hall, apparently in a writing and speech class,  oregonlive.com reports.

"That is the building where the shooting did take place," she said, adding that it's possible additional shots were fired elsewhere. "I heard the shots," said Michell, who was in Snyder Hall at the time. "It was a lot."

Jared Norman, a nursing student at UCC, told The (Roseburg) News-Review that he heard shots "and then everyone was running."

He was initially locked down in a cafeteria with 50 other students. "They've heard there is a shooting, but they don't know what's going on. And they're scared," he said.

"We locked our door and I went out to lock up the rest rooms and could hear four shots from the front of campus," UCC Foundation Executive Director Dennis O'Neill told the newspaper.

The News-Review also reported that an automated phone call went out to parents at Roseburg School District at 11:42 a.m. PT., informing them of the shooting.

Sara Mattison, a reporter for KVAL television, said she could see a female student covered in blood get into a car and leave the campus. Mattison also saw parents crying and looking for their children at the campus.

Shortly after the gunfire broke out, Kayla Marie, a music student at the school, tweeted: "Students are running everywhere. Holy God."

Lorie Andrews, 57, who lives across the street from the campus, said she heard several shots while sitting on her back porch, oregonlive.com reports. She estimated that some 20 ambulances and 75 police vehicles responded to the incident. 

Six Life Flight helicopters were dispatched to help the victims.

The school was placed on lockdown while police went building to building. Students eventually were allowed to leave, but were not permitted to take their own cars.  "Everybody is in shock. Very very shocked," Andrews said.

Sean Clark, a spokesman for Roseburg Health Care System, told KATU television that the hospital called in extra doctors and other staffers from other shifts to care for wounded in the attack.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tweeted that it had special agents at the college and was sending additional agents, as well as a K-9 team, to the scene. Officers from the federal Department of Homeland Security were also sent to the college.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown wrote on Twitter that “my thoughts are with the families and victims of today's tragedy.”

The White House said President Obama was briefed on the situation by his Homeland Security Adviser Lisa Monaco. He was to continue receiving updates throughout the day.

The college, 6 miles north of Roseburg, Ore., normally has 3,000 full-time students and 16,000 part-timers. Authorities quickly spread the word and called on residents and students not to go to the campus.

The college, established in 1964, has 16 buildings, and the campus includes a track, tennis courts, an outdoor pool and a vineyard.

The 100-acre campus is situated on verdant pasture along the North Umpqua River. In 2010, the school started construction on a $6.7 million viticulture building that now houses the Southern Oregon Wine Institute, which is a state of the art wine production and teaching facility.

The shootings are the first mass killings – an incident in which four or more people die, excluding the suspect – on a school campus this year, according to USA TODAY’s database of mass killings since 2006. On Oct. 24, 2014, Jaylen Fryberg, 15, shot five students, four of them fatally, at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Marysville, Wash., before dying at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.