OTTAWA – At least 10 people, including a gunman, were killed at a high school and residential area in western Canada, police said Tuesday.
Police say a woman opened fire and then turned the gun on herself at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia, adding they do not believe there is any further ongoing threat to the suspect or the public.
According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, six people were found dead inside the school, two more people died at a residence believed to be involved in the incident, and another person died while being taken to hospital.
The two victims suffered serious injuries and were airlifted from the school to the hospital. Police said about 25 other people with non-life-threatening injuries were being treated at local medical centers.
According to a police shooter alert, the suspect was described as a “female with brown hair wearing a dress.”
Police Chief Ken Floyd later confirmed in a press conference that the suspect listed in the alert was the same person found dead at the school. Police did not say how many of the victims were minors.
Tumbler Ridge Middle School has 175 students in grades 7 through 12, according to the state website.
Police have not yet determined a motive for the shooting.
“We are not in a position right now to understand why or what caused this tragedy,” Floyd said.
“I think we’re going to have a hard time figuring out the ‘why’, but we’re going to do our best to figure out what happened,” he added.
Floyd said it was not yet clear how many of the dead were children and, if so, what their connection was to the shooter.
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Police have identified the shooter but will not release details for privacy reasons, Floyd said. He declined to say whether the shooter was a child.
Tumbler Ridge is a town of about 2,400 people in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in western Canada, about 680 kilometers (422 miles) from the U.S. border.
Mass shootings are extremely rare in Canada, which has far stricter gun laws than the United States. The Small Arms Research Project estimates that there are 121 guns per 100 residents in the United States, compared to 35 guns per 100 residents in our northern neighbor.
A school shooting of this scale is almost unprecedented. In 1989, a gunman killed 14 women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique, prompting a national reckoning on violence against women and leading to stricter gun laws.
It is illegal to purchase assault-style rifles in Canada. Assault-style rifles are the type of weapon used in some of the deadliest school shootings in the United States.
Tumbler Ridge Middle School and Tumbler Ridge Elementary School will be closed for the remainder of this week, according to a notice posted on the local school district’s website.
British Columbia Premier David Eby said his government is “ensuring all support is available to local residents in the coming days as we all come to terms with this unimaginable tragedy.”
“Our hearts go out to Tumbler Ridge tonight with the families of those who lost loved ones,” he said in a post to X.
