Time has an
article by
Rob Gillies about a shooting in an unusual place:
Police on Saturday charged a seventeen-year-old boy with four counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder in a mass shooting at a school and home in an aboriginal community in Western Canada, officials said.
Police said the male suspect can not be named under Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superintendent Grant St. Germaine said nine people were shot in the school, two fatally: a teacher and a teacher’s aide. He said seven people wounded in the shooting at the school are hospitalized.
Police said two brothers, seventeen-year-old Dayne Fountaine and thirteen-year-old Drayden, were shot dead in a home before the gunman headed to the La Loche Community School.
The suspect was arrested at the school on Friday afternoon. Police said they were not aware of a motive and declined to say what type of gun he used.
The school is in the remote Dene aboriginal community of La Loche in Saskatchewan Province. La Loche is a community of less than three thousand, where just about everybody knows everybody else.
“This is a significant event for Canada,” St. Germaine said. “It’s a huge impact on the community of La Loche. It’s a part of changing times. We are seeing more violence.”
Shootings at schools or on university campuses are rare in Canada. However, the country’s bloodiest mass shooting occurred on 6 December 1989, at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique, when Marc Lepine entered a college classroom at the engineering school, separated the men from the women, told the men to leave and opened fire, killing fourteen women before killing himself.
The educational assistant killed at the Saskatchewan school was identified as Marie Janvier. Deegan Park, her boyfriend of three years, said he would have given up the rest of his life just to spend another year with her. “I grew up not a good guy, but she turned me right,” Park told The Associated Press. “She was that much of a great person to turn me right from all the wrongdoings I used to do. She was a fantastic person. I loved her, I really did,” said Park, who remembered her smile and how she would blush when she was happy.
Kevin Janvier said his daughter was an only child. “I’m just so sad,” he said.
Ashton Lemaigre, a teacher at the school and friend of Marie Janvier, said she worked as a teacher’s aide in his classroom. He said she was kind and patient with children and planned to get her teaching degree someday. “The kids loved having her around,” Lemaigre said. “They would just come running to her. And she was just a friend to everybody.”
A second victim was identified as Adam Wood, a new teacher at the school. His family in Ontario issued a statement describing him as an adventurer with a passion for life who made people laugh until their stomachs hurt. “Adam had just begun his teaching career in La Loche last September and was enjoying his time,” his family said. “He was always up for a good challenge and lived each day joyously.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, called it “every parent’s worst nightmare.”
A student who was just returning from lunch when the shots were fired said his friends ran past him urging him to get out.
“‘Run, bro, run!” Noel Desjarlais-Thomas, sixteen, recalled his friends saying to him as they fled La Loche’s junior and senior high school. “There’s a shotgun! There’s a shotgun!' They were just yelling to me. And then I was hearing those shots too, so of course I started running.”
The RCMP said the first reports of shots being fired at the school came in around 1 pm Friday, and parents and residents were warned to stay away. A nearby elementary school was also placed on lockdown as a precaution.
“Words cannot express my shock and sorrow at the horrific events today in La Loche. My thoughts and prayers are with all the victims, their families and friends and all the people of the community,” said Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, who planned to visit the community on Sunday and promised to provide crisis support and counseling services.
Bobby Cameron, Chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, said the shooting Friday was the worst tragedy to ever hit the community of three thousand. The Dene are an aboriginal group who inhabit the northern parts of Canada. “It’s not something you ever imagine happening here. The whole community, province, and country has been affected and we will all go into mourning,” said Cameron, who attended the La Loche school’s graduation ceremony for the past few years. “Right now we’re just in a state of shock and disbelief.”
The American ambassador to Canada, Bruce Heyman, offered his condolences and noted the problem of school shootings in America. “We have experienced similar tragedies far too often in the United States, and understand all too well the heartache and sadness that result,” Heyman said.
Rico says that Canada prided itself on
not having shootings, unlike America...
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