lot. they re going to have a press conference. we haven t been told who will be speaking. did you ever make it on to campus yourself? no. i work in eugene, which is an hour north of here. so by the time i got here, the road was closed. and did you have any, though you re working in eugene, did you have any connection to this campus prior to this? no, no. this is the first that we saw it on twitter and we raced out here to get here to see what was going on. first time i ve been to this campus. just like all of us, we re getting familiar with this because of this awful tragedy. how big would you number the press corps assembled there now? we re split up, half of us down at fair grounds where the reunification is occurring and the rest of us are waiting for the press conference. we re kind of splitting our time now. we were just on the phone with courtney rennie when she spotted her sister and her
flight south from portland. strauli sprawling campus, about 100 acres, about 18 buildings. not a large student population, though. about 3,000. 3,000 full time. roughly 16,000 combined with part time. and a small enough campus that a lot of students heard things earlier today. we were speaking with courtney rennie on the phone, heard a car backfiring but it was gunshots. so often the case. here s the douglas county sheriff. we now have audio. officers from around the county immediately responded to the college and upon arriving there, they located the shooter in one of the buildings. officers engaged that suspect, there was an exchange of gunfire. the shooter threat was
anyone who has said anything anecdotally, knew him, witnessed anything? do you have is there anyone you ve heard of who isn t accounted for? no. the only thing that i ve heard about, the shooter is he said something on a social media site that s not facebook, that not to go to school. i don t have anybody in my life as far as right now goes that s unaccounted for. i did hear that a writing teacher was shot in the head and i m just really hoping that that wasn t my writing teacher. so i m just i don t know. i m a little bit in shock right now. i m sure you are. i m sure the whole community college community is. what are you studying there? i m studying human services. okay. courtney, thank you.
university. standing directly across the street from the douglas county sheriffs who are positioned here in the intersection with the oregon state police. they seem to have a check point set up here. as i was driving south on the i-5 from portland here towards douglas county, passed by several law enforcement vehicles, lights, sirens, full package going on the way down to the college campus. what do you think will happen next? are you going to get another briefing where you are or think you ll be transported somewhere else? reporter: it looks like, for now, at this location, they re controlling people that are going in and out of what is very obviously a crime scene, we ve got police tape up here in the intersection and as soon as we can get a picture up, we ll bring you that as well, brian. jacob, thank you. we ll take that as soon as it s available. we ll check back in. courtney rennie, back with us, the student on the phone. courtney, last we spoke, you
this has been a hugely traumatic day and thanks for agreeing to be in touch with us again. so happy you ve been reunited with your family. anything to help. courtney, thank you. kate snow, back with us. glad she s okay. as a parent, it s hard, it s hard to hear these kids talk about what it s like and to be on campus and experience that firsthand. we appreciate her comments. she brought up a couple of things that we should note, have not been confirmed by nbc news. there are rumors, if you re on social media, you ve seen them. rumors about maybe there was something posted last night. the local sheriff was asked about that, whether the shooter posted something on social media. we re aware of that at nbc news and trying to check into it but we re being very careful about what we put on television, trying to verify things before we put them out there. that s right. we need a positive i.d. on the