SHOOTING AMONG DEADLIEST IN CANADIAN HISTORY
Police said the suspect, described “as female in a dress with brown hair”, had shot dead six people at the school in Tumbler Ridge, a remote municipality with a population of around 2,400 people in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Two more people were found dead at a residence believed to be connected to the incident, and another person died on the way to hospital. A suspected shooter was also found dead from what appeared to be a self‑inflicted injury, police said.
At least two other people were hospitalised with serious or life-threatening wounds.
The shooting ranks among the deadliest in Canadian history. Canada has stricter gun laws than the United States, but Canadians can own firearms with a license.
“There’s not a word in the English language that’s strong enough to describe the level of devastation that this community has experienced,” said Larry Neufeld, a local provincial legislator.
“It’s going to take a significant amount of effort and a significant amount of courage to repair that terror,” he told CBC News.
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 gas station.
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.
