‘LA LOCHE DEVASTATED’
Four confirmed dead in Saskatchewan shooting rampage
Her smile will light up the room on the darkest day. (She was the) sweetest caring person … We lost a loving sister today.
Sandie Janvier, cousin of victim Marie Janvier
Alex Janvier was walking through the halls of La Loche Community School when he heard a teacher yell, “Shooter in the school.”
Janvier, 15, ran back to his Grade 10 class, where fellow students and the teacher were already seated on the floor. He closed the door and the teacher told him to move with them toward the centre of the room.
The teacher was texting the principal and telling the students to stay calm.
“I was very scared. He was close to us,” Janvier said.
Four people died Friday, including a teacher and two relatives of the alleged shooter, who were fatally shot in a La Loche home before the suspect entered the school at around 1 p.m. and began shooting.
Multiple other victims in the school were injured, but details about the number of victims and the extent of their injuries were not available.
Janvier estimates that shots rang out, apparently just feet from their door, every 20 or 30 seconds, for a few minutes, before the shooting stopped. Someone then yelled that the RCMP had entered the school.
Janvier and the students then heard, “Stop, please! Stop!”
Less than a minute later, police opened their classroom door and told them the suspect had been apprehended.
Janvier knew the two boys who were shot in the residence before the shooter went to the school, as well as the deceased teacher, Marie Janvier, 23. He said the events of the day are beginning to hit his family hard. “I’m a little bit sad, really sad,” he said. In the hours after students were escorted out, Alex Janvier and his family — who live across from the school — watched dozens of emergency vehicles converge on the school. A steady stream of town residents continued to drive by late into the evening.
Outside the school Friday evening, a candlelight vigil was held. Across town, in one of the local halls, civic officials, RCMP officers and others met to come to terms with the situation.
Family members of Marie Janvier can’t believe she’s gone.
Kevin Janvier said he did not know if the alleged shooter knew his daughter.
“He shot two of his brothers at his home and made his way to the school,” said Janvier, adding that Marie was his only child. “I’m just so sad.”
Patrick Wagenaar, Marie Janvier’s cousin, said “she was a really good storyteller. She was really charming. She had really good attention to detail.”
Fighting back tears, he said while he knew La Loche was a “tough town,” he never expected something so tragic would happen in the remote Dene community of 3,000 residents, about 600 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.
“I don’t know, I can’t really believe it,” Wagenaar said. “I never expected it. No, I never would have seen it coming. You’d never expect things like that to happen so close to home.”
Sandie Janvier said her cousin Marie was the “sweetest caring person,” and that she would never hurt anyone.
“Her smile will light up the room on the darkest day,” she said. “We lost a loving sister today.”
An eyewitness who was just returning from lunch when shots were fired said his friends ran past him, urging him to get out.
“Run, bro, run!” Noel Desjarlais-Thomas, 16, recalled his friends saying to him as they fled the Dene building, which houses students in grades 7 to 12.
“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.”
Desjarlais-Thomas, a Grade 10 student, said he believes one of his friends might be among the dead. He forwarded to The Canadian Press a screenshot of a chilling exchange that had taken place on social media a short time before the shooting.
“Just killed 2 ppl,” wrote the young man. “Bout to shoot ip the school.”
“Why?” asked a friend. “Why?”
The shooting shocked residents of La Loche.
“Right now, La Loche is devastated,” said an emotional Clearwater River Dene Nation Chief Teddy Clark.
“The community usually pulls together really strong in times like this. ... Both Clearwater and La Loche, a lot of people are in shock. This is something that you only see on TV most of the time.”
At an evening news conference, RCMP Chief Supt. Maureen Levy said investigators were at two locations: a home in the 300 block of Dene Crescent and the school.
After receiving a complaint about an active shooter in the community at about 1 p.m., officers responded to the Dene building and “immediately began searching for the suspect.” At 1:47 p.m., a male was taken into custody outside the school, at which time a firearm was seized. La Loche Community School houses approximately 900 students in two buildings.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, addressing the country in a nationally televised speech, said he wanted to “express both our sympathy and support” for those impacted and in the community and also thanked first responders, who he said “acted swiftly and bravely.”
THE SHOOTING HITS CLOSE TO HOME FOR ME AS MY FAMILY MEMBERS ATTEND THE SCHOOL.
“Obviously this is every parent’s worst nightmare,” he said.
For years, La Loche has been struggling with a suicide epidemic.
The annual suicide rate in the surrounding Keewatin Yatthe Regional Health Authority averages 43.4 suicide deaths per 100,000 people — more than triple the provincial average.
La Loche Community School has also been subject to scenes of violence before, but never on this scale.
In November 2011, a 15-year-old was stabbed in the hallways of the school. A 13-year-old male student was arrested.