The Oregon college gunman who murdered at least nine people has been named as Chris Harper-Mercer – a 26-year-old with links to Britain who celebrated other mass murderers and said: ‘The more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight’.

The killer, who said he idolized the IRA and Nazis, on Thursday walked into Umpqua Community College in Roseburg wearing body armor and carrying three handguns and a rifle before shooting dead students.

Witnesses said he had made his victims stand-up at gunpoint and say if they were Christian before telling them: ‘Good, you’ll see God in a second’ and shooting them in the head. Survivors only saved their own lives by playing dead.

After his bloody rampage was reported to police he was then killed in a gunfight with officers with one source saying: ‘He appears to be an angry young man who was very filled with hate’.

His British father Ian Mercer, who lives in California, said: ‘I’m just as shocked as everybody at what happened. I’ve just been talking to the police and the FBI. That’s all the details I have right now, is what you know already.

He added: ‘Obviously, it’s been a devastating day. Devastating for me and my family’.

Neighbors said Harper-Mercer was a visibly ‘anxious’ and friendless loner who lived with his mother and surfed dating sites looking for love. He was often seen wearing camouflage clothing and may even have joined the U.S. Army.

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He used a reference to a Nazi war medal as his dating profile name, and posted glowing reviews of Nazi memorabilia he had bought online.

His Myspace page is littered with images glorifying masked IRA fighters, lauding them as ‘undefeated’ and ‘looking cool’ – right next to images of him holding a rifle.

Harper-Mercer wrote in a post this August about how much he admired Vester Flanagan, the Roanoke shooter who killed a cameraman and newscaster at the television station where he had been employed after getting fired.

On that same profile it also showed that just three days ago Harper-Mercer uploaded This World Surviving Sandy Hook BBC Documentary 2015 for people to watch on the file sharing site.

‘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,’ wrote Harper-Mercer of Flanagan.

‘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.’

He closed by saying; ‘Also, if anyone gets the chance, go on youtube and see the footage of him shooting those people. It’s a short video but good nonetheless. Will post more later.’

According to his profile on a dating site Harper-Mercer is ‘mixed race,’ a ‘conservative Republican,’ ‘not religious’ and lives with his mother – and appears to have a large family from Britain.

So far nine victims have died plus the gunman making 10 fatalities in total.

‘At this time, we are reporting and can confirm 10 fatalities in the shooting,’ Douglas County sheriff’s deputies, Sheriff John Hanlin said Thursday evening.

‘This number is the best, most accurate information that we have at this time.’

Harper-Mercer’s parents Ian Mercer and Laurel Harper were married until 2006, and he lived in an apartment complex near the shooting.

His motive is still not known at this time, but he came armed with three pistols, a rifle, body armor and a large amount of ammunition.

He demanded that his victims lay on the ground and then made them stand up one at a time and state their religion before opening fire, according to traumatized eyewitnesses. Christians were shot execution style while others were shot in the body.

Autumn Vicari told NBC News her 19-year-old brother J.J. was in a classroom when Harper-Mercer opened fire but managed to escape. He saw the gunman ask victims if they were Christian and if they responded ‘yes’, he shot them in the head. If they said ‘other’ or refused to answer he shot them in the body.

Kortney Moore said she was in her writing class when a bullet went through the window hitting her teacher in the head. Soon after, the shooter was inside the room demanding to know the religion of her fellow students.

The 18-year-old laid on the ground next to some of the victims shot by the gunman but managed to make it out alive.  

Anastasia Boylan, 18, was one of Harper-Mercer’s victims who only survived by playing dead.

Her father Stacy spoke to CNN and described his daughter’s horrifying ordeal.

‘And they would stand up and he said, “Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second,”‘ said Stacy.

‘And then he shot and killed them.’

His daughter was shot in the spine but still alive when Harper-Mercer demanded she stand back up, but she refused and instead acted dead so he moved on, her father said.

Anastasia also told her father that Harper-Mercer shot her professor first point black, saying; ‘I’ve been waiting to do this for years.’

A heroic student charged at the Oregon college shooter and was shot five times as he tried to save his classmates, his family said.

Army veteran Chris Mintz, 30, was taken to hospital following the massacre.

His cousin Derek Bourgeois told DailyMail.com: ‘I was told he went after the shooter.’

‘There was no way he was going to stand around and watch something this horrific happen.’

Bourgeois, who lives in North Carolina, said no vital organs were hit when Mintz was shot multiple times and he is expected to recover after spending most of Thursday in surgery.

Student Cassandra Welding called her mother when she saw her first classmate get shot.

‘I heard a really loud ka-pow noise, almost like a balloon popping, and we, all of our classmates, jumped and we did not know what it was,’ Welding said.

‘We knew something wasn’t right, and so a classmate of mine went to go open the door to see what was happening next door to where the shooting occurred, and she opened the door and, unfortunately, she got shot twice and she fell down and collapsed.’

She was shot in the arm and abdomen and a fellow student performed CPR.

‘I heard her breathing was really labored, she was like gasping for air, and we were just in frantic mode at that point,’ she said.

Then Welding called her mother, Lisa, who was able to advise the classroom over the phone.

‘First thing, make sure all of the doors are secured and make sure you start barricading,’ Welding told her daughter. ‘If there’s anything there, I don’t care how, just make sure you guys are all safe to keep somebody out.’  

Brady Winder, 23, of Portland, was on campus when he described hearing a ‘thud.’

He told The News-Review he then then heard a barrage of gunfire and saw students fleeing ‘like ants.’

Bronte Hart, who lived in the apartment below Harper-Mercer and his mother said the young man ‘seemed really unfriendly’ and that he would often ‘sit by himself in the dark in the balcony with this little light.’

She also said that his mother was seen ‘crying her eyes out’ on Thursday.

The shooter’s stepsister was shocked by the news.

‘I don’t know what to say. I’m shaking right now,’ said Carmen Nesnick in an interview with NBC Los Angeles.

‘He was a nice guy. He put everyone before himself. It doesn’t sound right because he wanted everyone to be happy.’

She also said that she had not seen her stepbrother in a year, and that he was born in England before moving to the United States.

Ian Harper, the father of the gunman who is divorced from the young man’s mother, told CBS Los Angeles; ‘I am just as shocked as anybody at what happened today.’

The Los Angeles Times spoke to former neighbors of Harper-Mercer and his mother Laurel who described the pair as loners.

They also said that Harper-Mercer, who would often wear camouflage pants tucked into black boots, seems to carry around a black case with a gun inside and loved target shooting.

Rosario Lucumi, 51, said that mother Laurel would frequently call her son ‘baby’ despite the fact that he was an adult, and would get involved in disputes over loud noises and at one point a cockroach infestation she said was keeping her son awake at night.

Lucimi’s daughter, Rosario Espinoza, said the young man always appeared ‘anxious’ and ‘nervous.’

‘He was a little odd, like sensitive to things,’ said Rebecca Miles, who took a theater class with Mercer, while another neighbor, Steven Fisher, described him as ‘skittish’.

‘His demeanor, the way he moved, always looking around,’ Fisher said. ‘I got a bad vibe from him.’

Shortly after the mass shooting, President Obama addressed the nation demanding stronger gun laws, saying that the country has become ‘numb’ to these events.

He also asked that the public look at the number of Americans killed by guns over the past ten years compared to the number killed by terrorist acts.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 153,144 people were killed by homicide in which firearms were used between 2001 and 2013, the last year that data are available reports NBC News.

The Global Terrorism Database – which uses a criteria to determine terrorist attacks but also includes acts of violence that are more ambiguous in goal – estimates that 3,046 people in the U.S. died in terrorist or possible terrorist attacks between 2001 and 2014.

The Oregon sheriff dealing with the shooting is a known gun rights activist. In January 2013 after the Sandy Hook shooting he wrote to Vice President Joe Biden in opposition to further gun control, the New York Daily News reported.

Limiting gun access was ‘not the answer to preventing heinous crimes like school shootings’, he wrote, imploring the White House not to ‘tamper with or amend’ the second amendment.

Police described how they exchanged fire with the gunman who went on the rampage at the Umpqua Community College in dramatic 911 dispatcher recordings.

The officers described how they shot at the attacker as he was standing next to a library as 35 people were ‘piled in the hall’ in fear of their lives.

The recordings capture the moment the gunman is shot dead when an officer says: ‘The suspect is down’.

The dispatcher describes the incident as a ‘major trauma’ and asks for all available ambulances to be sent to the scene.

The recordings were made by emergency services in Roseburg, Oregon and made public by Broadcastify.

They show that police in the rural town try to keep their calm as the full scale of the horror becomes apparent.

According to Douglas County Police, the incident began in Snyder Hall, a large lecture theater used by the science department.

In the recordings officer says: ‘Exchanging shots with him. He’s in a classroom on the, it’s gonna be the South East side of the hall.

The dispatcher says: ‘Gunshots with the male in the classroom on the South East side of Synder Hall’.

The officer says: ‘Unconfirmed report he’s got a long gun.’

The dispatcher says: ‘He’s next to the library, there’s about 35 people in the hall piled in on lockdown’.

Sirens blare in the background and after a pause another officer says: ‘The suspect is down’.

The dispatcher confirms and says: ‘Code 4, suspect is down’.

After a few minutes another officer says: ‘The suspect is down, we’ve got multiple gunshot wounds, we’re going to need multiple ambulances on scene’

The dispatcher confirms that numerous ambulances are on the way.

An officer tells the dispatchers: ‘I need all traffic to pause unless emergency. Please dispatch as many ambulances as possible to this incident, we have upwards of 20 victims.’

The officer says: ‘Upwards of 20 victims, approximately 15 are deceased.’

The dispatcher says: ‘Notify emergency of major trauma, upwards of 15 deceased.’

The Umpqua Community College shooter appears to have targeted the science building because it is a large lecture hall and would have allowed him to cause mass casualties.

A Douglas County fire official told CNN when he arrived on the scene, they found ‘multiple patients in multiple classrooms.’

Students from UCC were eventually evacuated to the Douglas County Fairground for a debriefing.

President Barack Obama was briefed on the Oregon shooting rampage by homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco and will receive updates throughout the day, according to a White House official

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest addressed the shooting during Thursday’s daily briefing, saying Obama is committed to passing tougher gun control laws.

‘The issue of sensible steps that can be taken to protect our communities from gun violence continues to be a top priority of this administration,’ Earnest told reporters.

‘The president has been quite candid about how this is and has been a source of frustration for him.’

Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio, who represents Roseburg, said in a statement that his thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. He also expressed gratitude for the first responders.

DeFazio says once he knows more about what happened, he plans to work with his colleagues in Congress to find ways to prevent such tragedies.

The two-year college, located 180 miles south of Portland, has more than 4,000 students, more than half of them female. The average age of students enrolled in UCC is 38.

According to Everytown for Gun Safety, a pro-gun control group, the incident in Oregon is the 45th shooting at a school so far this year.