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Roseburg, Ore. • Three police officers arrived at the scene of Thursday's massacre at Umpqua Community College within six minutes, exchanged gunfire with shooter Chris Harper-Mercer and prevented him from "killing dozens of other people who were in that classroom and in the immediate vicinity," Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said Saturday.

Sometime during the gunfight, Harper-Mercer, 26, killed himself, according to the Oregon State Medical Examiner. The information was released by Hanlin at Saturday's final news conference on the shooting, which took the lives of 10 people, including Harper-Mercer, and injured nine others.

Hanlin also revealed that authorities had found another handgun belonging to Harper-Mercer, bringing his stockpile to 14. Authorities previously said he brought six of those weapons — five handguns and a rifle — to the school, along with a steel-paneled flak jacket and five extra magazines of ammunition.

Hanlin thanked the officers who halted the shooter and Chris Mintz, an Army veteran who was wounded seven times as he charged Harper-Mercer, who was blasting his way through a classroom door.

And Hanlin spoke directly to families of Harper-Mercer's victims, telling them that "your loved ones are our heroes. They will never be forgotten."

A witness to the bloodshed said the gunman questioned victims at gunpoint about their religious affiliations. Umpqua student Savannah Nardli said her friend Anastasia Boylan, who underwent surgery for a gunshot wound in the spine, remembered the shooter asking her classmates, "Are you Christian?" before he shot them.

On Friday, Hanlin read aloud the names and ages of the nine people who were fatally shot by Harper-Mercer, who was a student at Umpqua. Most were in the writing class where the shooting began, many of them teenagers barely out of high school. The oldest victim was their teacher, 67-year-old Lawrence Levine. One of the dead had recently completed drug rehab and gone back to college. Two others were relatives of emergency responders in the community.

Quinn Cooper, 18, was in his fourth day of college; he graduated from high school in June.

"I don't know how we're going to move forward with our lives without Quinn," his family said in a statement read at the afternoon news conference. "Our lives have been shattered beyond repair."

Less than 20 minutes after the shooting rampage began, Harper-Mercer died during an exchange of gunfire with police.

Relatives of Mintz, 30, the former Army infantryman, said he was shot three times as he tried to block the door and keep the gunman out of the classroom. Mintz's aunt, Wanda Mintz, said her nephew was knocked to the floor by the blasts, looked up at the gunman as he burst into the classroom and tried to reason with him.

"He hit the ground and looked up at him and said, 'It's my son's birthday - don't do this,' " Wanda Mintz recounted, after speaking to his son's mother, who has been by his side at the hospital.

"The guy shot him at least two more times."

Mintz survived but suffered two broken legs among other wounds and will need extensive physical therapy, according to a GoFundMe page set up to raise money for his treatment.

By Friday afternoon, more than $120,000 had been raised. Two law enforcement officials said the shooter left behind an angry note, several pages long, describing his fury and depression.

Harper-Mercer appears to have been an active user of the popular piracy site KickassTorrents, where he posted chilling and sympathetic musings about Vester Flanagan, who shot and killed two journalists in August during a live newscast in Virginia, according to an FBI official with knowledge of the investigation.

"I have to say, anyone who knew him could have seen this coming. People like him have nothing left to live for, and the only thing left to do is lash out at a society that has abandoned them," the post says.

"Seems the more people you kill, the more you're in the limelight."

Hundreds of books, movies and TV shows have also been uploaded to the site since April 30, 2013, under the email address ironcross45gmail.com.