School shooting at La Loche in Canada

IN Canada’s worst school shooting since 1989, a gunman has killed four people and injured two at a high school in the remote province of Saskatchewan.

Police say a 17-year-old has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder. The male suspect can’t be named under Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Supt. Grant St. Germaine says nine people were shot in the school, two fatally. He says seven people wounded in the shooting at the school are hospitalised.

Police say two brothers, 17-year-old Dayne Fountaine and 13-year-old Drayden, were shot dead in a home before the gunman headed to the La Loche Community School.

The suspect was arrested outside the school yesterday.

Located deep in Canada’s northern boreal forest, 600 kilometres north of Saskatoon, La Loche has about 3,000 inhabitants.

Because it is so isolated, authorities had to send in police reinforcements and dispatch a medical helicopter to airlift some victims to a hospital.

HARROWING ACCOUNT

A student allegedly stormed La Loche Community School in Saskatchewan around 1pm, after shooting his two younger brothers at home.

La Loche Community School student Cayleen Jayden Park was walking through the school when she heard three gunshots ring out.

“I just stood there. I had a panic attack. The principal was telling everyone to get into the classrooms,” she said.

“I ran into Miss Albertine’s office. Other students saw what I was doing and ran into classrooms.”

Park stayed in the office for two hours while the school was locked down, and listened as police tried to talk the shooter down — who she says was yelling.

She confirmed the shooter was a student and was older than her.

One of Park’s friends was shot in the leg, and a fellow classmate was also shot.

‘RUN, BRO, RUN’

The town’s acting mayor Kevin Janvier told The Associated Press his 23-year old daughter Marie, a teacher, was shot dead by the gunman.

“He shot two of his brothers at his home and made his way to the school,” he said.
“I’m just so sad.”

Marie was Janvier’s only child. He said he didn’t know if the shooter knew his daughter.

One boy, 13, told the Toronto Star how he watched his teacher shot dead in front of him.

The teenager was in math class when he heard several shots ring out. “I got scared and I got down to, like, behind the desk,” he said. The teacher told students to go against the wall, but as the children obeyed, someone fired into the classroom and hit the tutor in the back.

A family friend of the shooter told Reuters that the gunman had shot his two younger brothers before walking back to the school and shooting a teacher and a girl.

“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,” Joe Lemaigre said.

“’Run, bro, run!” Noel Desjarlais-Thomas, 16, 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.”

NATION IN SHOCK

Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, described the shooting as “every parent’s worst nightmare”.

The PM issued a statement of condolences to the families and friends of the victims.
The new prime minister said his Liberal government would have to reflect on Canada’s current gun laws in the coming weeks and months in light of the shooting.
The previous Tory government had scrapped a short-lived national registry of rifles and shotguns.

Many Canadians living in rural areas own long guns like the one that appears to have been used in the shooting, and led a strong opposition to the registry they said wrongly targeted farmers and hunters.