A remote mountain town in Canada has been shaken by the country’s deadliest school shooting in decades, when an armed assailant killed at least nine people.
Nine people have been killed and dozens wounded after a shooting at a school and home in northeast British Columbia, Canada on Tuesday afternoon.
Six of the victims were found dead at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, making it Canada’s deadliest school shooting in decades. A seventh person died en route to hospital, while the bodies of two people were found at a home in Tumbler Ridge, a town of just 2,400 people.
The alleged shooter, who was found dead at the school with a self-inflicted injury, is believed to have killed two more people, whose bodies were discovered at a home in the township
Two victims were airlifted from the school to hospital with serious or life-threatening injuries. And about 25 other people were also being treated at a local medical center, police said.
In an emergency alert which went out to residents’ phones, authorities described the suspect as a brown-haired woman wearing a dress, according to CNN affiliate CBC News.
“We are not in a place now to be able to understand why or what may have motivated this tragedy,” said Superintendent Ken Floyd, the North District commander of the British Columbia Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
“I think we will struggle to determine the ‘why,’ but we will try our best to determine what transpired,” he said.
Mass shootings are rare in Canada, a country with much stricter gun laws than the US, and school shootings of this scale are almost unheard of.
