Police said on Wednesday that the suspect in a deadly school attack in western Canada was an 18-year-old woman with mental health issues who killed her stepbrother and mother before attacking her former school; however, investigators did not offer a motive for one of the worst mass killing in Canadian history.
The police identified the killer as Jesse Van Rootselaar, who died by suicide after the shooting on Tuesday in Tumbler Ridge of British Columbia.
She once attended the school; however, dropped out four years ago. Under the provincial Mental Health Act for an assessment, Van Rootselaar had been apprehended, stated Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald, commander of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia.
He said that police had attended that family on various occasions over the past several years, dealing with concerns of mental health with respect to our suspect.
“We will get through this. We will learn from this,” a visibly upset Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters.
Carney, postponed a trip to Europe and ordered flags on all government buildings to be flown at half-mast for the next seven days.
Hours later, legislators in the House of Commons observed a minute’s silence and listened as a sombre Carney said the killings had left the country in shock and mourning.
He said that it is a town of teachers, miners, construction workers, families who have built their lives there, people who have always shown up for each other there … Tumbler Ridge represents the very best of Canada.
McDonald said Van Rootselaar, who was born male but began identifying as female six years ago, had first killed her mother, 39, and 11-year-old stepbrother at the family home.
She then went to the school, where she killed a 39-year-old woman teacher, three 12-year-old female students and two male students, one aged 12 and one aged 13. also a long gun and a modified handgun were recovered from the her.
Many were injured, and two severely injured victims, aged 12 and 19, remain in hospital.
Police officers who arrived at the scene two minutes after the initial call encountered active gunfire, including rounds fired in their direction, as per the authorities, before discovering Van Rootselaar dead from an apparent self-inflicted wound.
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 petrol station.
In December 1989, a gunman killed 14 female students and injured 13 at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, before dying by suicide.
“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 efforts and a significant amount of courage to repair that terror,” he told to media.
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