Village reeling after stabbing spree

Answers sought in aftermath of stabbing spree

Shell-shocked residents of a remote Inuit village in northern Quebec said Sunday they saw no hints of any pent-up anger from a young man suspected of carrying out a deadly stabbing spree against his relatives.

“Last time I saw him the night before, he smiled at me with a very big grin,” one of his hockey teammates recalled.

Illutak Anautak’s recent social media posts also offered few clues.

“Akulivik,” he wrote on Facebook last month, referring to the close-knit village where he lived, “always the best.”

Anautak, 19, is suspected of breaking into three homes early Saturday and stabbing several of his relatives. According to community members, three of them — two uncles and a 10-year-old male cousin — died, and two others were seriously injured.

The suspect, who was described as “fun” and “caring,” was later shot dead by police.

“I had only three hours of sleep and I’m in shock because I know the people who died and they are my relatives,” the hockey teammate, who requested anonymity, told the National Post.

“We have no idea why he did this. In our tradition, we don’t blame other people. … He was a very nice man. Loving, caring, always helping other people. He was our best goalie in our hockey team.”

The teammate, who is also an emergency firstresponder in the community, said he began receiving frantic calls from several of the village’s 600 residents around 7 a.m. Saturday.

One victim, he said, was stabbed multiple times and had his throat slashed. He was found dead near his home.

The remaining victims were stabbed at a duplex not far away. One of the victims managed to make it to a neighbour’s porch before he died.

The 10-year-old boy scrambled a few hundred metres away from his house before collapsing. He was taken to the local nursing station but did not survive.

“He managed to breathe a bit, but I think he lost too much blood,” the first-responder said.

Two more people were airlifted to a Montreal hospital with serious injuries. The CBC reported that one was another child.

At one point, the neighbourhood crackled with gunfire when officers from the Kativik Regional Police confronted the suspect as he attempted to enter a fourth residence, according to Quebec’s independent investigation bureau.

“The police officers fired to prevent (the entry),” the police unit said. “The individual reportedly fell to the ground and rose to advance towards the police who fired again, hitting him mortally.”

Witness Meeko Aliqu told the Canadian Press police yelled at the suspect to “Drop it! Drop it!” in Inuktitut. When he didn’t drop the knife, officers fired back. The suspect got up and was shot again as he entered the house, she said.

CBC News reported that sometime before that confrontation with police Anautak went to Facebook to declare that he had stabbed more than five people.

“I just don’t care if I killed someone else,” he allegedly wrote before the posts were taken down.

Johnny Alayco, the suspect’s cousin, told Le Journal de Québec, that the two had been drinking the night before. Anautak did not seem upset or say anything strange, Alayco said.

Residents said Anautak himself had lost his mother in a homicide.

Makivik, an organization representing Quebec’s Inuit community, released a statement calling the stabbing spree an “incomprehensible tragedy.”

“Things like this are not supposed to happen in our society. All of Nunavik is in mourning. Our thoughts and prayers go to the families and people of this closeknit village,” the statement read.

“My heart is broken. My mind is broken,” Eli Aullaluk, a town councillor, told the CBC.

Located on the shores of Hudson Bay, the village of Akulivik is serviced by an airstrip and a seaplane base.

Mineral exploration in the region back in the 1950s left behind a toxic legacy, according to a 2015 report sponsored by the University of Laval. The report found that dynamite discarded in nearby Lake Isiurqutuuq led to the acidification of the lake and “the death of all of its fish,” which had been an important source of food.

Meanwhile, a dearth of recreational opportunities in the community today means young people often turn to alcohol or marijuana, the first-responder said.

“I think it’s because we have no gym for sports or a baseball field or anything like that,” he said.

And the nearest healing centres or addiction treatment facilities are 600 km away in Kuujjuaq.

But amidst the grief, Nowya Quissa, another fellow hockey player, sent a Facebook message Sunday urging resilience.

“We’re not going to fall,” he wrote, “we will be standing strongly.”