Investigators work at Ridge Secondary School after a mass shooting took place yesterday leaving 10 people dead at a secondary school and nearby home in the rural community of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Feb. 11. AFP-Yonhap
TUMBLER RIDGE, Canada — Canadian police said Wednesday an 18-year-old carried out a mass shooting in a remote mining town, killing six people at a local school, after slaying her mother and stepbrother.
Police commander Dwayne McDonald said authorities still don't know the motive in Tuesday's mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, but the shooter — who took her own life — was known to have mental health issues.
McDonald identified the shooter as Jesse Van Rootselaar, a transgender woman who was born biologically male and dropped out of the targeted high school four years ago.
McDonald revised the toll down to eight from nine, due to earlier confusion over the condition of one of the victims.
Officers who entered the town's high school found six people dead — a 39-year-old woman teacher and five students — three 12-year-old girls and two boys, aged 13 and 12.
The shooter, armed with a long-barreled gun and a pistol, was found dead from "a self-inflicted gunshot wound" after the massacre, said McDonald, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police deputy commissioner in British Columbia.
The shooter's other victims were her mother and stepbrother, and she was known to officers who had made multiple visits to their home in response to mental health calls, McDonald said.
The killings in the family home were discovered after another family member alerted neighbors, he said.
McDonald said the shooter had previously held a firearms license which had lapsed and that weapons had previously been confiscated from her residence — but were subsequently returned.
Source: Korea Times News
