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Oregon school shooting: Retired, off-duty medical personnel rushed to help treat victims

When gunfire rang out at Umpqua Community College, the medical community in the small town of Roseburg, Oregon, sprung into action, even coming out of retirement to aid the staff treating shootings victims at Mercy Medical Center.
/ Source: TODAY

When gunfire rang out at Umpqua Community College Thursday afternoon, the medical community in the small town of Roseburg, Oregon, sprang into action, with some doctors even coming out of retirement to aid the staff treating shootings victims at Mercy Medical Center.

“It was phenomenal teamwork, with all of our ER docs, with our nurses, with our lab people, with our operating room — everybody really pulled together,” Kelly Morgan, the hospital’s chief executive officer, said Friday on TODAY. “We had people, actually doctors that were retired that came in to help out.”

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Mercy Medical Center took in 10 of the shooting victims, all of whom were treated for gunshot wounds to various parts of their body, including their head, abdomen and legs. The shots were made to the “front and back of patients,” said Dr. Jason Gray, chief medical officer at Mercy.

While the hospital is a designated trauma center and the staff train routinely for such emergencies, Thursday's shooting, in which at least nine were killed and nine were injured, was a first for the center.

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"The community, like this, has not seen something of this magnitude before," he said.

On Friday morning, Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said "overnight, investigators have located a number of firearms" linked to the shooter and said details about the discovery would be released later in the day. But he revealed few other details about the shooting.

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"It's very early in the investigation. We will be trying to determine exactly what happened in that classroom, but it is too early to tell at this point," he said.

Authorities have identified the gunman as 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer, who was killed during a shootout with officers.

Follow TODAY.com writer Eun Kyung Kim on Twitter.