Nine people were killed and at least 27 others were wounded in a mass shooting that shattered the small Canadian town of Tumbler Ridge, authorities said, as a local pastor called the violence “beyond comprehension.” The suspected shooter appears to have taken their own life at Tumbler Ridge High School, police said.
Six people were shot dead at the high school, and a seventh person with a gunshot wound died while en route to a hospital, according to authorities. Separately, police said two more bodies were found at a residence in Tumbler Ridge. In total, 27 people were wounded, including two with serious injuries and 25 others with non-life-threatening wounds.
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The violence, which has shaken a close-knit community, unfolded at a school many residents know intimately. “This is beyond comprehension,” said George Rowe, a local pastor who once taught at Tumbler Ridge High School and raised his children there. “It’s a school that we raised our children in. It’s a school that I was teaching myself in for about eight years, and so I’m at home imagining the layout of the school where the shootings may have taken place … so it was just an agonising couple of hours.”
Authorities did not immediately release further details about the victims. Police said the suspected shooter appears to have died by suicide at the school. The circumstances linking the school attack and the two deaths at a separate residence were not immediately clear.
Rowe described Tumbler Ridge as “like a village,” where people see each other at the post office or grocery store and look out for one another. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful town, and why this happens … I’m sure we’ll get some answers, but the town is having a very difficult time to comprehend the whys of this tragedy,” he said.
The pastor added that residents will grieve in different ways and on different timelines, but the community’s instinct is to gather and help. “We will stay together, support each other, be there, and the support from across the country is absolutely phenomenal,” Rowe said. “It’s hard to think someone we could have just met at the post office or grocery store could be capable of something like this.”
When an alert was lifted, Rowe went to the town’s recreation centre, where families were gathering. He said the scene was difficult to describe, and the weight of the trauma was evident in every conversation. He did not yet know when memorial services could be held.
As residents absorbed the scope of the Tumbler Ridge High School shooting and the additional deaths at a nearby home, Rowe said the shock would only deepen. “The shock is definitely going to come. And we just do our best and work through the pain,” he said.
Officials asked for patience as the investigation proceeds. For many in Tumbler Ridge, a town built on neighborly ties, the hours after the shooting were marked by unanswered questions—and an immediate, instinctive response to care for one another.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
