Gunman's family reacts to Oregon massacre
TORRANCE, Calif. --The man suspected of opening fire on a college campus and killing nine people in Oregon had ties to Torrance and relatives in Tarzana, California, CBS Los Angeles reported.
Two law enforcement sources told CBS News that Chris Harper Mercer, 26, was the man who opened fire at Umpqua Community College. He died after exchanging gunfire with responding officers.
Carmen Nesnick, the stepsister of Mercer, said he was born in the United Kingdom and traveled to the United States as a young boy.
"I'm actually still shaking and my mom is in there crying. I don't know what to do," said Nesnick, who said that Mercer's father, who lives in Tarzana, married her mother a few years ago.
She says the last time she spoke with Mercer was about a year ago. Even though they had met only a few times, Nesnick described him as "caring and supportive."
"All he ever did was put everybody before himself. He wanted everyone to be happy. No matter if he was sad or mad, he would always try to cheer up everybody," she said.
Nesnick said her stepbrother was not a religious nor anti-religious person and that her family is Christian.
"I am just as shocked as anybody at what happened today," said Ian Mercer, the suspect's father.
"I can't answer any questions right now. I don't want to answer any questions right now. Obviously, it's been a devastating day, devastating for me and my family," he said.
The suspect allegedly left a note behind and investigators have it, CBS News has learned. Law enforcement sources say it is several pages long and in it, the 26-year-old made statements suggesting that he may have been depressed and angry.
Sources told CBS News' Senior Investigative Producer Pat Milton the multi-page typed note was a philosophical rant of someone who was mad at the world. The source said the note was focused a great deal on the suspect's low opinion of himself.
Milton reports that throughout the writings, the suspect obsesses about himself and his place in the world, which he apparently did not think was very good. Mercer had also apparently taken a creativity or writing course at Umpqua Community College. There is no indication that the suspect was affiliated with any group. And his motive is still unclear.
Meanwhile, Bronte Hart, who lived below Mercer in the community of Winchester, told the Associated Press that Mercer would "sit by himself in the dark in the balcony with this little light."
Hart, who said Mercer "seemed really unfriendly," told the AP that a woman she believed to be Mercer's mother also lived upstairs and was "crying her eyes out" Thursday night.
Posts on an online blog that appears to belong to Mercer reference multiple shootings, including one in Virginia in August that left a television news reporter and cameraman dead. The last upload on the blog was Wednesday. when a documentary about the Newtown shooting was posted.
In one post on the blog about Vester Flanagan, the man who killed the reporter and cameraman in Virginia, Mercer apparently wrote, "I have noticed that so many people like [Flanagan] are 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 like the more people you kill, the more you're in the limelight."
The U.S. Army said Mercer flunked out of basic training in 2008. Lt. Col. Ben Garrett, an Army spokesman, said Mercer was in service at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, starting on Nov. 5, 2008. But by Dec. 11, 2008, he was discharged for failing to meet the minimum administrative standards.