Canada school shooter sentenced to life in prison
CALGARY, Alberta: A judge has sentenced a Canadian man to life in prison for killing four people, two of them in a school, and injuring seven more in a rare mass shooting in Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) reported on Tuesday.
The man’s identity is protected by a court-ordered publication ban because he was a minor during the January 2016 killings in the isolated and impoverished town of La Loche in northern Saskatchewan.
He was sentenced after pleading guilty last year to killing a teacher and teaching assistant in a local school and two teenage brothers in their home in La Loche, 850 kilometres northwest of Saskatchewan’s capital, Regina.
Judge Janet McIvor sentenced the man as an adult even though he was 17 at the time of the shooting.
She ruled earlier this year that a lighter youth sentence was inappropriate.
He will be eligible for parole in 10 years, CBC reported.
“I can’t undo what I did. I’m sorry,” the man said in a Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan courtroom, according to the CBC report.
CBC reported that the publication ban on his identity remains in place until the appeal period lapses.
The man pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder.
Mass shootings are less common in Canada than the United States, which has less stringent gun laws. A gunman killed six people in a January 2017 Quebec mosque shooting. — Reuters