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| Oregon mall shooting: Teen survivor in serious condition - Chicago Tribune Posted: 12 Dec 2012 08:41 AM PST A teenage girl wounded in a shooting spree at an Oregon shopping mall that left three dead, including the suspected gunman, is in serious condition, a hospital official said today. Kristina Shevchenko was one of at least three people shot when a man wearing what appeared to be a hockey mask opened fire with a rifle at the crowded Clackamas Town Center in the Portland suburb of Happy Valley. Police will release the names of the victims and the shooter at a news conference at noon Chicago time today. Shevchenko's name was released by the Oregon Health & Science University Hospital on authorization of her family. "The family is doing OK," Shevchenko's brother, Yevgeniy, said. He said his sister was 15 years old and declined further comment. In a Facebook posting Tuesday night, Yevgeniy Shevchenko said: "As of now she is stable and sleeping. the bullet went through bruising her lung, it missed any vital organs and it missed her ribs. she will need 2 more operations. we appreciate any and all support including your prayers! thank you." "It really was a killing of total strangers, to my knowledge at this point and time. He was really trying to kill as many people as possible," Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts told ABC's "Good Morning America."People at the mall were heroic in helping get shoppers out of the building, including emergency room nurses who rendered aid, Roberts said.Employees at the mall with 2,000 employees were trained to run and hide, lock down and evacuate. Since previous mass shootings, the first arriving officers were trained to form teams and go inside instead of waiting for SWAT. "This could have been much, much worse," Roberts said. The first 911 call came at 3:29 p.m. Tuesday. The first officers arrived a minute later. By 3:51 p.m., all the victims and the gunman and rifle and been found. Four SWAT teams spent hours clearing the 1.4 million square-foot mall, leaving shoppers and workers to hide in fear. The mall Santa, Brance Wilson, was waiting for the next child's Christmas wish when shots rang out, causing the mall to erupt into chaos. About to invite a child to hop onto his lap, Wilson instead dove for the floor and kept his head down as he heard shots being fired upstairs in the mall. "I heard two shots and got out of the chair. I thought a red suit was a pretty good target," said Wilson, 68. Families waiting for Santa scattered. More shots followed, and Wilson crept away for better cover. Witnesses said the gunman fired several times near the mall food court until the rifle jammed and he dropped a magazine onto the floor, then ran into the Macy's store. Witnesses heard the gunman saying, "I am the shooter," as he fired rounds from a semi-automatic rifle inside the Clackamas Town Center, a popular suburban mall several miles from downtown Portland. Some were close enough to the shooter to feel the percussion of his gun. Police rapid-response teams came into the mall with guns drawn, telling everyone to leave. Shoppers and mall employees who were hiding stayed in touch with loved ones with cellphones and texting. Kayla Sprint, 18, was interviewing for a job at a clothing store when she heard shots. "We heard people running back here screaming, yelling '911,'" she told The Associated Press. Sprint barricaded herself in the store's back room until the coast was clear. Jason DeCosta, a manager of a window-tinting company that has a display on the mall's ground floor, said when he arrived to relieve his co-worker, he heard shots ring out upstairs. DeCosta ran up an escalator, past people who had dropped for cover and glass littering the floor. "I figure if he's shooting a gun, he's gonna run out of bullets," DeCosta said, "and I'm gonna take him." DeCosta said when he got to the food court, "I saw a gentleman face down, obviously shot in the head." "A lot of blood," DeCosta said. "You could tell there was nothing you could do for him." |
| UN Security Council discusses response to North Korea launch - Reuters Posted: 12 Dec 2012 08:55 AM PST UNITED NATIONS | (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council met on North Korea's rocket launch on Wednesday, a move Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned as a "provocative act" in breach of resolutions banning Pyongyang from developing ballistic missiles. Several council diplomats said they hoped the 15-nation body could swiftly agree a similar condemnation and later consider a binding resolution, possibly expanding already existing U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang. "We support a strong reaction by the council, it's a clear violation," French U.N. Ambassador Gerard Araud told reporters before going into the council meeting. "But we have to see what our friends want." "We do consider it logical to sooner or later have a resolution," he added. British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant echoed that sentiment: "In our view (the council) should react, it should react quickly, and it should react strongly to this provocation." A senior Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity that the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea were among those who would like to see U.N. sanctions expanded. That could include adding more entities to the U.N. blacklist, banning travel and freezing assets of individual North Korean officials and tightening the cargo inspection regime. Whether or not the council can agree a resolution - with or without expanding the sanctions - will depend largely on China and its diplomatically on the Security Council, Russia. Both nations have veto powers and tend to support each other and vote the same way on issues important to either of them. "Exactly what the Chinese will be prepared to accept in form and substance is not yet clear," the diplomat said. He hoped they could have a resolution agreed by the end of next week. Diplomats said China's expression of regret about the launch combined with a call for restraint left few clues as to what it would accept. Russia expressed "deep regret," which Western diplomats said they hoped was a signal that it would accept a strong response by the council. 'CLEAR VIOLATION' North Korea successfully launched a rocket on Wednesday, boosting the credentials of its new leader and stepping up the threat the isolated and impoverished state poses to opponents. The rocket, which North Korea says put a weather satellite into orbit, has been labeled by the United States, South Korea and Japan as a test of technology that could one day deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting targets as far away as the continental United States. It was Japan that first appealed to the Security Council to take up the issue of North Korea's missile launch. Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, expressed concern that the launch could negatively impact prospects for peace and security in the region. A statement issued by Ban's office said the launch was "a clear violation of Security Council resolution 1874, in which the Council demanded that the DPRK not conduct any launch using ballistic missile technology." The statement said Ban had urged North Korea's leaders not to launch a missile but "instead to build confidence with its neighbors while taking steps to improve the lives of its people." "The Secretary-General is concerned about the negative consequences that this provocative act may have on peace and stability in the region," the statement said, adding that Ban was in touch with "concerned" governments. North Korea followed what it said was a similar successful launch in 2009 with a nuclear test that prompted the U.N. Security Council to stiffen sanctions that it originally imposed in 2006 after the North's first nuclear test. North Korea is banned from developing nuclear and missile-related technology under U.N. resolutions, although Kim Jong-un, the youthful head of state who took power a year ago, is believed to have continued the state's "military first" programs put in place by his late father, Kim Jong-il. (Editing by David Storey and Xavier Briand) |
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