Oregon Shooting Suspect Chris Harper-Mercer Linked To Blog Post About Roanoke Gunman Vester Flanagan: Reports

The 26-year-old suspect who fatally shot at least 10 people Thursday at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon has been linked by various media outlets to a blog post about another gunman. The email address associated with Chris Harper-Mercer's profiles on Myspace and a dating website was also connected to an account on the file-sharing site KickassTorrents, TIME reported. That user recently published comments describing the sudden infamy Vester Flanagan experienced after he killed two reporters on live TV in August.

Flanagan, a former employee at WDBJ in Roanoke, Virginia, opened fire on camera Aug. 26. The shooting was broadcast live, and as Flanagan fled the scene he tweeted videos of the murder of Alison Parker and Adam Ward. Authorities also discovered he'd faxed a 23-page manifesto to ABC News outlining his reasons for the shooting.

The user thought to be Harper-Mercer, Lithium_Love, later wrote that he'd read parts of the manifesto and "anyone who knew him could have seen this coming." Lithium_Love said Flanagan was a victim of his perception and the media-soaked environment of the United States.

"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," Lithium_Love wrote, according to the Daily Beast. "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. 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 your’re [sic] in the limelight."

Lithium_Love ended the post by encouraging readers to watch the footage of the Roanoke shooting -- "a short video but good nonetheless," he said. The same account recently uploaded a documentary about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Police said they received 911 calls starting at about 10:38 a.m. local time Thursday about a shooting at Umpqua, a school south of Portland with about 3,000 full-time students. The suspected gunman, later identified as Harper-Mercer, killed at least 10 people and wounded seven before dying in a confrontation with law enforcement, the Los Angeles Times reported.