At least nine people have been killed in a school shooting in a picturesque, isolated town in Western Canada.
Reports from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police say that the suspect, initially described as a “female in a dress with brown hair,” has also been found dead after the shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia on Tuesday afternoon.
The school has around 160 to 175 students, according to the district, and is considered the heart of the local community, which itself sits at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
A further 27 people were injured in the attack on the school, although two of the nine victims are believed to have been killed off-campus at a nearby residence.
Although police have not definitively confirmed that the two attacks are linked, the RCMP told reporters that this is currently one of their main lines of inquiry.
The shooter is the tenth death associated with the attack, with police giving the as-yet unnamed person’s cause of death as a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
What happened during the shooting at Tumbler Ridge?
Canadian police first received a report about an active shooter at the school at around 1.20 pm, with authorities responding in around 2 minutes, according to David Eby, the premier of British Columbia.
“I was getting briefly off of my support block, which ends at one thirty our time,” Darian Quist, a Grade 12 student at the school, told CBC. “I was heading down to the mechanics classroom, nothing seemed wrong.”
Quist said that one of his teachers began shouting in the corridor that the school was being placed under$ lockdown.
“For a while, I didn’t think anything was going on,” he said, until reports on his phone about the shooting began to come through. “We got tables and barricaded the doors and I believe we sat in there for two hours, two hours and thirty minutes, until members of the RCMP and I believe SWAT came through the door and escorted us at the high school.”
The Grade 12 student says that he did not hear the shooting unfolding at the school, since he believes that it was happening upstairs on the other side of the building.
While waiting, though, he began receiving disturbing pictures of “blood” from his classmates in other parts of the school.
During the attack, six students were killed on campus, with a seventh dying on the way to the hospital.
Cops eventually canceled the alert at 5.45 pm on Tuesday, stating that officers believed there were no “outstanding suspects or threats to the public.”
Who was the shooter who opened fire at Tumbler Ridge?
Police have not yet revealed the shooter’s identity, although an initial police alert described the suspect as “female in a dress with brown hair.”
Ken Floyd, the RCMP North District Chief Superintendent, has confirmed that the suspect described in the alert was the same as the person believed to have carried out the shooting.
That suspect was found dead by police, having died from a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The shooter’s motive remains unknown, although investigations are underway to determine what led them to attack the school.
“We are not in a place now to be able to understand why or what may have motivated this tragedy,” Floyd told reporters.
Where is Tumbler Ridge Secondary School?
Tumbler Ridge is a remote town located in northeastern British Columbia, with a population of just 2,400.
One local resident told the newspaper that cellphone service cuts out just 30 seconds after leaving town because of its isolated location.
However, the town is located in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and is surrounded by an expansive UNESCO-recognized geological park.
Tumbler Ridge was once a major hub for mining, but its two major mines closed permanently in 2000 and 2003.
However, because Tumbler Ridge is such a tight-knit community, many of the victims of the shooting are known to most of the town.
“I will know every victim. I’ve been here 19 years, and we’re a small community,” the town’s mayor, Darryl Krakowka, said, according to the BBC. “I don’t call them residents. I call them family.”
British Columbia, where Tumbler Ridge is located, has the highest rates of gun ownership of any area in Canada.
According to the Department of Justice, around 16 percent of people surveyed in the area reported owning a firearm.
Source: independent.co.uk