Boy, 17, held in shootings at home, school in Canada
Fourwere killed in the mass attack in an aboriginal community.
toronto » Police on Saturday charged a 17-yearold boy with four counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder in a mass shooting at a school and home in an aboriginal community in western Canada, officials said.
Police said the male suspect can’t be named under Canada’s Youth Criminal JusticeAct. RoyalCanadian Mounted Police Supt. Grant St. Germaine said nine people were shot in the school, two fatally — a teacher and a teacher’s aide. He said the seven others shot in the school in Friday’s incident are hospitalized.
Police said two brothers, 17-year-old Dayne Fountaine and 13-year-old Drayden, were shot dead in a home before the gunman headed to La Loche Community School, which serves grades 7-12.
The suspectwas arrested at the school.
The school is in the remote Dene aboriginal community of La Loche in Saskatchewan. La Loche is a community of fewer than 3,000 people where just about everybody knows everybody else.
“This is a significant event for Canada,” St. Germaine said. “It’s a huge impact on the community of La Loche. It’s a part of changing times. We are seeing more violence.”
Shootings at schools or on university campuses are rare in Canada. However, the country’s bloodiest mass shooting occurred Dec. 6, 1989, at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique, when Marc Lepine entered a college classroom at the engineering school, separated the men from the women, told the men to leave and opened fire, killing 14 women before killing himself.
The educational assistant killed Friday was identified as 21-year-old Marie Janvier. Deegan Park, her boyfriend of three years, said he would have given up the rest of his life just to spend another year with her.
“I grewup not a good guy, but she turned me right,” Park told The Associated Press. “I loved her, I really did.”
Kevin Janvier said his daughter was an only child. “I’m just so sad,” he said.
Ashton Lemaigre, a teacher at the school and friend of Marie Janvier’s, said she worked as a teacher’s aide in his classroom. He said she was kind and patient with children and planned to get her teaching degree someday.
“The kids loved having her around,” Lemaigre said. “They would just come running to her. And she was just a friend to everybody.”
The second school fatality was identified as Adam Wood, a newteacher at the school. His family in Ontario issued a statement describing him as an adventurer with a passion for life who made people laugh until their stomachs hurt.
“Adam had just begun his teaching career in La Loche last September and was enjoying his time,” his family said. “He was always up for a good challenge and lived each day joyously.”
Canadian Prime Minister JustinTrudeau, whowas attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, called the shootings “every parent’s worst nightmare.”
A student who was just returning from lunch when the shots were fired Friday said his friends ran past him urging him to leave.
“’Run, bro, run!” Noel Desjarlais-Thomas, 16, recalled his friends saying to him as they fled the junior/ senior high school. “‘There’s a shotgun! There’s a shotgun!’ They were just yelling to me. And then I was hearing those shots, too, so, of course, I started running.”