Shootings at school and home in Canadian town leave 10 dead, many injured

A shooting at a school in British Columbia left eight dead including a woman whom police believe to be the shooter, while two more people were found dead at a nearby home, Canadian authorities said on Tuesday. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said more than 25 people are injured, including two who were airlifted to hospital with life-threatening injuries, after the shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. School shootings are rare in Canada. The town of Tumbler Ridge in the Canadian Rockies is more than 1,000km (600 miles) north of Vancouver, near the border with Alberta. The provincial government website lists Tumbler Ridge Secondary School as having 175 students from Grades 7 to 12. British Columbia Premier David Eby told reporters that police officers reached the school within two minutes. They found seven people dead, local police said in a statement, including a suspect who appeared to have died of a “self-inflicted injury”. An eighth person died while being transported to a hospital, and two more were found dead at a home the authorities believe was connected to the attack. RCMP Superintendent Ken Floyd told reporters that investigators had identified a female suspect but would not release a name, and that the shooter’s motive remained unclear. He added that police are still investigating how the victims are connected to the shooter. Tumbler Ridge student Darian Quist told the public broadcaster CBC that he was in his mechanics class when there was an announcement that the school was in lockdown. He said that initially he “didn’t think anything was going on”, but started receiving “disturbing” photos about the carnage at the school. Then “it set in what was happening,” Quist said. He said he stayed in lockdown for more than two hours when police stormed in, ordering everyone to put their hands up before escorting them out of the school. Tumbler Ridge Mayor Darryl Krakowka said the whole community was grieving. “I broke down,” he said, saying it was “devastating” to learn how many had died in the community of 2,700, which he called a “big family”. “I have lived here for 18 years,” Krakowka said. “I probably know every one of the victims.” Pastor George Rowe of the Tumbler Ridge Fellowship Baptist Church went to the recreation centre where the victims’ families were awaiting more information. “It was not a pretty sight. Families are still waiting to hear if it’s their child that’s deceased and because of protocol and procedure the investigating team is very careful in releasing names,” Rowe said. “The big thing tonight was my having to walk away and the families still waiting to find out. It is so difficult. Other pastors and counsellors are there so they are not alone.” Rowe once taught at the high school and his three children graduated from there. “To walk through the corridors of that school will never be the same again,” he said. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a social media post that he was devastated by the shooting. “I join Canadians in grieving with those whose lives have been changed irreversibly today, and in gratitude for the courage and selflessness of the first responders who risked their lives to protect their fellow citizens,” he wrote. Carney’s office said he was suspending a planned trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Munich, Germany. He was set to announce a long-awaited defence industrial strategy in Halifax on Wednesday before heading to Europe for the Munich Security Conference. Eby, the province’s premier, told reporters he had spoken to Carney after what he called the “unimaginable tragedy”. “I know it’s causing us all to hug our kids a little bit tighter tonight,” he said. “I’m asking the people of British Columbia to look after the people of Tumbler Ridge tonight.” Canada’s government has responded to previous mass shootings with gun control measures, including a recently broadened ban on all guns it considers assault weapons. The shooting ranks among the deadliest in Canadian history. In April 2020, a 51-year-old man disguised in a police uniform and driving a fake police car shot and killed 22 people in a 13-hour rampage in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia, before police killed him at a petrol station about 90km (60 miles) from the site of his first killings. In Canada’s worst school shooting, in December 1989, a gunman killed 14 female students and wounded 13 at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, before committing suicide. Canada has stricter gun laws than the United States, but Canadians can own firearms with a license. The Trudeau government introduced a number of restrictions on handgun ownership and assault-style weapons since 2020, partly in response to the mass shooting in Nova Scotia and the Uvalde school shooting in Texas. However, attempts to ban certain types of rifles and shotguns were abandoned after opposition from farmers and hunters. Reporting by Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters

Shootings at school and home in Canadian town leave 10 dead, many injured

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Police say a suspect is among the dead and more than 25 people are injured in the remote British Columbia town of Tumbler Ridge

Police say a suspect is among the dead and more than 25 people are injured in the remote British Columbia town of Tumbler Ridge