BRITISH COLUMBIA- A shooter killed at least nine people and injured dozens more at a secondary school and residence in Canada before taking their own life.
Eight people were found dead, including the attacker, inside Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia, as well as two at a connected residence.
The shooter, believed to be a woman, appeared to have died from a self inflicted gunshot wound at the scene. A total of 27 were wounded with two people sustaining life-threatening injuries. The attacker has not yet been named and their motive remains unclear. They were described as a ‘female in a dress with brown hair’, according to an emergency alert sent to phones. As police searched the school, they found six people shot dead. A seventh person with a gunshot wound died en route to hospital
School children barricaded their classroom doors with tables as they hid from the shooter.
Darian Quist, a Grade 12 student, said he was in a mechanics class when an urgent lockdown alarm sounded in the hallways instructing them to close the doors. At first he ‘didn’t think anything was going on’ but then he received ‘disturbing’ pictures showing the carnage at the school.
‘‘It set in what was happening’ and for more than two hours they ‘got tables and barricaded the doors,’’ Quist said, until police arrived to escort them out of the building, where he met up with his mother.
Trent Ernst, a former substitute teacher at the school, said: ‘‘There’s been troubled kids here in town before’’.
Tumbler Ridge Town Councillor Chris Norbury, whose wife teaches at the secondary school, said it was ‘terrifying’ when found out the school had been attacked.
A shooter killed at least nine people and injured dozens more at a secondary school and residence in Canada before taking their own life. (Pic: Reuters)