Oregon Shooting Gets 5 Million Google Searches: Chris Harper-Mercer Blogged About Spilling Blood
The Oregon shooting is listed as the top “hot topics” subject on Alexa.com’s “What’s Hot” list; a list of popular URLs published by the Amazon firm. According to the Inquisitr, the circumstances that led Chris Harper-Mercer to potentially warn 4Chan members of the coming Oregon shooting on the night before the shooting on the 4Chan message boards are being investigated by federal authorities.
Google Trends reports that the Oregon Shooting received a whopping five million searches or more on Thursday, October 1. The fact that Chris left an online trail of his atheist viewpoints also struck a chord with readers, with a MySpace page reportedly belonging to Harper-Mercer showing Chris praising the Irish Republican Army.
The Umpqua Community College in Oregon, within the rural community of Roseburg, Oregon, left folks shocked. The shooting in Oregon also prompted the hashtag #UCCShooting to go viral on Twitter. The Oregon school shooting at the small Oregon community college reportedly involved the shooting of Christians, says the Washington Post. The Oregon shooter allegedly asked his shooting targets if they were Christians. If they answered yes, Harper-Mercer shot them in the head. If they answered no or didn’t answer at all, Chris reportedly shot them in the leg.
That shooting report harkens the UCC shooting back to another tragic school shooting. Reports of the Oregon shooter asking about belief systems before shooting is reminiscent of the account chronicled in She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall, an account of the Columbine shooting whereby Bernall may or may not have been asked by a shooter if she believed in God prior to being shot and killed.
In the midst of all the news about the 4chan warnings prior to the Roseburg shooting at the Umpqua campus, a man named Chris Mintz is being hailed as a hero who tried to stop the college shooting at UCC. As reported by the Independent, 30-year-old Mintz charged the gunman during the Oregon community college shooting, and Mintz was shot several times during his heroic acts. Mintz began the day wishing his 6-year-old son happy birthday on Facebook, says the Daily Mail.
Meanwhile, as the Oregon shooter was identified via breaking news reports as Chris Mercer, President Obama called for common sense laws about gun control. The Umpqua shooting in Roseburg represents another senseless school shooting — this time in Oregon — that has brought the gun control debate to the forefront as has sites like the Onion publishing stories mocking folks who say there’s nothing that can be done. In the meantime, on Twitter, folks want to highlight Mintz’s name over Mercer’s name.
The shooting in Oregon left folks stunned because the Umpqua Community College is nestled in a quiet community. Shootings don’t usually make the Oregon news, at least not at that Oregon Community College town. In the wake of the tragedy fake Mercer Facebook pages have been set up, with Internet pranksters calling Chris a hero, even as others try to unravel why Harper-Mercer would take so many lives in Roseburg at the Oregon college.
According to Yahoo, the Roseburg, Oregon shooting didn’t make sense to the step-sister of Harper-Mercer, who reported that the mass shooting in Oregon didn’t jibe with what she knew about Chris.
“I’m shaking right now. He meant a lot to me. He was a nice guy, and he put everyone before himself… it doesn’t sound right. All he ever did was put everyone before himself. He wanted everyone to be happy.”
Online writings prior to the mass shooting at the community college show that Chris sympathized with the shooter in Virginia, and the shooting in Oregon was preceded by the shooter in Oregon leaving plenty of online clues. The school shooting in Oregon proved that the shooter may have been looking for fame as noted by his writings.
“Yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are.”
[Image via MySpace]
