WINNIPEG, Manitoba, and VANCOUVER (Reuters) - The gunman suspected of
killing four people and injuring several others in Canada's worst school
violence in a decade first shot his two brothers at home before opening
fire at the remote community high school, a family friend and the
town's acting mayor said on Friday.
Police said a
suspect was arrested after the shooting in La Loche, Saskatchewan, an
impoverished community about 600 km (375 miles) north of the city of
Saskatoon. The town's acting mayor, Kevin
Janvier, told the Associated Press that his 23-year-old daughter Marie, a
teacher, was shot to death.
He also said police
told him that the gunman first shot two of his siblings at home and then
made his way to the school. Officials have not given a motivation for the shooting or named the suspect or victims.
Mass shootings are rare in Canada, which has stricter gun
laws than the United States. In the country's worst school shooting, 14
college students were killed at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. A
shooting in 1992 at Concordia University in Montreal killed four.
A family friend said the teenaged suspect shot his two
younger brothers before going to the school and shooting a teacher and
an assistant.
“After he shot his two brothers, he walked back
to school and he shot ... a teacher and a girl. They’re both dead. Four
of them died,” said Joe Lemaigre, a family friend who lives on the
outskirts of La Loche. “I know the family. Their mother worked in Fort
McMurray and his grandfather went to Meadow Lake to do some shopping.
That's when he shot them."
The shooting occurred in
the high school and a second location, Canadian police said, adding they
took the suspect into custody outside the school and seized a gun.
Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Saskatchewan
Indian Nations, which represents more than 70 of the province's Indian
bands, said a few students were in surgery Friday evening in Saskatoon,
the province's largest city. "Everyone is still in shock and disbelief," Cameron said. "It's a very, very horribly tragic event."
La Loche student Noel Desjarlais told the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation that he heard multiple shots fired at the
school, which has about 900 students. "I ran outside
the school," Desjarlais said. "There was lots of screaming, there was
about six, seven shots before I got outside. I believe there was more
shots by the time I did get out."
A cellphone video
taken by one resident and broadcast by the CBC showed students walking
away from the school across the snow-covered ground and emergency
personnel moving in. "Obviously this is every
parent's worst nightmare," said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who
initially reported five people were killed. He was in Davos,
Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum.
Among Canada’s provinces, Saskatchewan had the highest rate of
police-reported family violence in 2014, double the national rate of 243
incidents per 100,000 people, according to a Statistics Canada report
on Thursday.
Extra doctors and nurses were sent to
treat patients in Keewatin Yatthe Regional Health Authority's 16-bed
hospital, said spokesman Dale West. He declined to say how many people
had been injured. “It’s really sad in La Loche
today, very depressing,” said Tenisha Lemaigre, who lives in the town of
less than 3,000 people and said she knew many students.
Unemployment runs above 20 percent in the area but
three-quarters of working-age people are classified as retired or not
looking for work, according to 2011 government figures. Residents say
the real unemployment rate is above 50 percent.
In 2014, a teacher expressed concern about violence at the
La Loche school, noting that a student who had tried to stab her was
put back in her classroom after serving his sentence, and another
attacked her at her home.
"That student got 10 months," Janice Wilson told the CBC of
the student who tried to stab her in class. "And when he was released he
was returned to the school and was put in my classroom."
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