18-year-old man kills nine people at school and home in Canada. There are 27 injured

A “devastating” and very rare attack in the country was allegedly carried out by a trans woman: 10 dead and two victims in serious condition, after shootings in British Columbia. Students and teachers are expected to be among the fatal victims.

A shooting at a school in British Columbia, Canada, killed eight people, including a person who police believe was the shooter. Two other people were found dead in a nearby home, a murder authorities suspect was linked to the school attack.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RPMC) stated that 27 people were injuredincluding two who were transported by helicopter to the hospital with serious injuries, following the shooting at Tumbler Ridge High School, in one of the deadliest attacks in the country’s recent history.

Authorities have avoided releasing details about the identity or age of the victims, but have not ruled out that students and faculty members were among the dead. Authorities also still don’t know what motivated the shooting.

A police alert sent to cell phones in the area described the person responsible for the attack as a “woman in dress and brown hair”. Police Superintendent Ken Floyd later confirmed that the person described in the alert was the same suspect found dead at the school. Police said they knew the identity of the suspect, but did not release her name, age or gender.

The suspected gunman was also found dead.victim of a self-inflicted wound, said the police, adding that they believed there were no further suspects nor a threat to the public. Meanwhile, some Canadian media, such as the Western Standard and , identified Jesse Strang18 years old, who is transgender, as the alleged perpetrator of the shooting, based on testimony from a close family member.

A public YouTube account believed to belong to Strang displays the transgender flag and uses the pronouns “she/her,” according to Juno News.

“Everyone has guns here”

A Brazilian teacher at the site described how him and his students hid for several hours in a garage on school grounds during the shooting.

One of the students came into his mechanics class saying he had heard gunshots. The school principal, Stacie Gruntman, arrived at the door of the garage where the class was taking place, two minutes later, shouting “lockdown [confinamento]”.

Jarbas Noronha, with the help of 15 students, barricaded the garage doors with benches. And they waited for everything to end “in the safest part of the school,” he told : “If someone tried to break in through the hallway door, we would run into the courtyard through the garage doors.”

The Brazilian would stay with the students in the garage for two hours until the police arrived. He later described Tumbler Ridge as a “hunter’s town”: “Everyone has guns here”.

“I broke down”

School shootings are rare in Canada. This Tuesday’s attack was the deadliest in the country since 2020, when a shooter in Nova Scotia killed 22 people, according to , and set fires that killed nine more people.

Wednesday’s attack It will be the third deadliest shooting in the countryafter the one in 2020 and the one in Montreal, in 1989.

The town of Tumbler Ridge, in the Canadian Rockies, is more than 1,000 kilometers north of Vancouver, near the border with Alberta. The provincial government website indicates that Tumbler Ridge Secondary School has 175 students, from the 7th to the 12th year.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported that, at around 1:20 p.m., they began receiving calls about the attack at the school in the small town, with around 2,400 inhabitants. British Columbia Premier David Eby told reporters that police arrived at the school within two minutes.

At the scene, they found seven dead, police reported, including the suspect in the attack. An eighth person died on the way to the hospital, and two others were found dead in a house.

Tumbler Ridge Mayor Darryl Krakowka said the entire community is grieving.

“I broke down,” he said, considering it “devastating” to know how many people had died in the small community, which he described as a big family. “I’ve lived here for 18 years,” Krakowka said. “I probably know all the victims.”

Pastor George Rowe, of Tumbler Ridge Fellowship Baptist Church, went to the recreation center where the victims’ families were waiting for more information.

“It was not a pretty scene. The families are still waiting to find out if it was their son who died, and due to protocols and procedures, the investigation team is being very cautious in releasing names,” Rowe said.

The Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carneystated on social media that he was devastated.

“I join Canadians in mourning those whose lives were irreversibly changed today, and in gratitude for the courage and selflessness of the first responders who risked their lives to protect their fellow citizens,” he wrote.

Carney’s office announced that the prime minister had suspended a planned trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and another to southern Germany, where he would participate in the Munich Security Conference.