Police authorities charged a 17 year old boy with four counts of first degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder over his mass shooting at a school and a home.
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Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superintendent Grant St Germaine says nine people were shot in the school, two fatally.
Members from all sides of the Commons spoke of the loss that still echoes from the tragedy, in which four people were killed and seven others wounded in La Loche, a remote northern town populated predominantly by First Nations members.
LeBlanc pledged the governing Liberals will respond to Friday’s shootings with actions to protect citizens and, more broadly, to improve the lives of Indigenous people.
This rural Dene community of about 3,000 has the highest suicide rate in the province of Saskatchewan, and the rate is about three times that of the national average, CBC News reports.
La Loche is an isolated community connected by one road from the south and can be reached by an ice road from Fort McMurray, Alta., in winter. She said she doesn’t think destroying the building would help.
The shooting drew outpourings of support and sympathy from across Canada, where school shootings remain rare.
Archbishop Murray Chatlain estimated about 250 people attended a Sunday morning service at the Church of Our Lady of the Visitation.
In La Loche, the school’s fate was already being debated after calls from the acting mayor and others that it be torn down and rebuilt. Teacher’s aide Maria Janvier, 21, died at the school, while teacher Adam Wood, 35, died in hospital. “When we were out and about, kids would say ‘Hi.’ They would just come running to her. And she was just a friend to everybody”. “The whole community, province and country has been affected, and we will all go into mourning”, Cameron said.
Sources close to the prime minister say Trudeau will travel to northern Saskatchewan to visit the community in person, although timing details were not immediately available.
His family in Ontario said in a statement that he was an adventurer with a passion for life who made people laugh until their stomachs hurt.
It’s believe the shooting began at a home in the community, where witnesses have said the shooter gunned down two relatives before moving to the school. “I’m not only speaking about us, but our leaders need to step up, too”, he said to applause.
A student who was just returning from lunch when the shots were fired Friday said his friends ran past him urging him to get out.
Both the high school and the nearby elementary building are closed indefinitely. “The conversation would just stop and something else would happen, the subject would (change.) No one ever thought this was going to happen”.
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Bruce Heyman, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada also reached out his condolences and noted the similar cases of schoolshootings in the United States.
