Canadian police on Wednesday identified the 18-year-old who carried out a mass shooting in a remote mining town, as authorities investigate the suspect’s mental health and previous interactions with police and healthcare providers.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald said authorities still did not know the motive in Tuesday’s mass shooting.
The shooter — who took her own life — was known to have mental health issues.
Photo: AFP
McDonald identified the shooter, who killed her mother and stepbrother before shooting dead another six at a school, as Jesse Van Rootselaar, a transgender woman who dropped out of the targeted high school four years ago.
The shooter was known to police, and “we’ve begun the process of reaching out to” the public healthcare system to “understand what interactions may have taken place,” British Columbia Premier David Eby told a news conference outside the Tumbler Ridge town hall late on Wednesday evening.
Authorities have said the shooter had previously held a firearms license, which had lapsed, and that weapons had previously been confiscated from her residence — but were subsequently returned.
“I have a lot of questions. I know the people of Tumbler Ridge have a lot of questions,” Eby said, adding that officials want to do “all we can” to “prevent tragedies like this from happening again.”
Nearly everyone has a connection to one of the victims in the small town in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, where hundreds gathered for the candlelight vigil.
“I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” said Emphraim Almazan, a local miner who moved to the tight-knit community of about 2,400 three years ago. “I was like, there’s no way it happened in Tumbler Ridge.”
The initial toll was reported at nine before being revised down to eight, but “there’s a young girl who is fighting for her life,” Eby said.
Officers who entered the town’s high school found six people dead — a 39-year-old female teacher and five students — three 12-year-old girls and two boys, aged 13 and 12. Twelve-year-old Maya Gebala was clinging to life on Wednesday night, after being shot in the head and neck, her aunt Krystal Hunt told CBC.
The child “tried to lock the door of the library from the shooter to save the other kids,” before being wounded, Hunt said.
The shooter, armed with a long-barreled gun and a pistol, was found dead from “a self-inflicted gunshot wound” after the massacre, McDonald said.
Flags would be lowered nationwide to half-staff for seven days following the tragedy, among the deadliest shootings in Canada’s history.
“These children and their teachers bore witness to unheard of cruelty. I want everyone to know this: Our entire country stands with you, on behalf of all Canadians,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in an emotional address to parliament.
“We will get through this. We will learn from this, but right now, it’s a time to come together, as Canadians always do,” Carney said.
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