TORONTO: Ten people including the shooter are dead after an assailant opened fire at a high school in western Canada on Tuesday in one of the country’s deadliest mass casualty events in recent history.
The attack brought to Canada the type of mass shooting more common in the neighbouring United States, and was carried out by a shooter described as female, police said.
Six people were found dead inside a high school in the town of Tumbler Ridge, in British Columbia, two more people were found dead at a residence believed to be connected to the incident, and another person died on the way to hospital, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
At least two other people were hospitalised with serious or life-threatening wounds, and as many as 25 people were being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
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Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Wednesday the entire country was in mourning. “The nation mourns with you. Canada stands by you,” Carney said in brief remarks to reporters.
“It was a situation that you really never want to face again ... the sight of what I saw was devastating, many parents just waiting for the news on whether their child had survived the shooting or not,” said local pastor George Rowe.
Police claim identifying suspect
Canadian police identified the person who carried out the school massacre as an 18-year-old woman with mental health issues, but did not give a motive for one of the worst mass shootings in Canada’s history.
The killer, who police named as Jesse Van Rootselaar, committed suicide after the shooting on Tuesday in Tumbler Ridge, a remote community in the Pacific province of British Columbia. Police revised the death toll down to nine from the initially reported 10.
“Police had attended that (family) residence on multiple occasions over the past several years, dealing with concerns of mental health with respect to our suspect,” said Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald, commander of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia.
McDonald said Van Rootselaar, who was born male but began to identify as a female six years ago, had first killed her mother, 39, and 11-year-old step-brother at the family home.
She then went to the school, where she shot a 39-year-old woman teacher as well as three 12-year-old female students and two male students, one aged 12 and one aged 13.
Police would only identify victims when they had “absolute, unequivocal identification,” he told CBC News on Wednesday.
A suspected shooter was also found dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted injury, police said, adding they did not believe there were any more suspects.
“It’s hard to know what to say on a night like tonight. It’s the kind of thing that feels like it happens in other places and not close to home,” British Columbia Premier David Eby told reporters.
Police released almost no details about the shooter except to say the person was described as female — potentially an unusual development as mass shootings in North America are almost always carried out by men.
A police active shooter alert said the suspect was described “as female in a dress with brown hair”. Police later confirmed that the suspect described in the alert was the same person found dead in the school.
Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2026