A shooting at a school and a home in the Canadian province of British Columbia on Tuesday left 10 people dead — including the suspected shooter — and more than two dozen “with various physical injuries,” officials said.
Six people were killed inside Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, while a seventh died while being taken to a hospital, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a news release.
Two other victims were found dead in a nearby residence in an incident “believed to be connected” to the school shooting, officials said.
At least 25 people were treated for non-life-threatening injuries, while two victims were airlifted to a hospital — one in “critical condition” and the other in “serious but stable condition,” officials said, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
The suspected shooter was found dead inside the school from a self-inflicted injury.
Authorities have not released the identities of any of the victims or said how many were children.
The suspect has been identified, but their identity has not been released, officials said.
A shelter-in-place alert earlier in the day described the suspected shooter as a “female wearing a dress with brown hair.” Their relationship to the school remains unclear.
The shooting — believed to be the third-deadliest in Canada’s history — stunned the small Tumbler Ridge community, a tight-knit rural town in the western Canadian province.
“I broke down,” Mayor Darryl Krakowka said of the shooting at the school, which has 175 students. “I have lived here for 18 years. I probably know every one of the victims.”
“We don’t lock our doors here,” town councilor Chris Norbury told the BBC World Service. “It is an incredibly safe community,” he said of the town of roughly 2,700 people.
Police issued a safety alert shortly before 1:30 p.m. following reports of an active shooter at the school.
The alert was canceled at 5:45 p.m. after authorities said there were no additional suspects or any “ongoing threat to the public.”
“While the RCMP emergency alert has been lifted, the people of Tumbler Ridge remain in a state of crisis following one of the worst mass shootings in the province’s and the country’s history,” Nina Krieger, British Columbia’s minister of public safety and solicitor general, said at a press conference.
B.C. Premier David Eby called the shooting a “devastating and unimaginable tragedy,” telling reporters it has made Canadians want to “hug our kids a little bit tighter tonight.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement he was “devastated by [the] horrific shootings” and grieved alongside “those whose lives have been changed irreversibly.”
He also expressed gratitude “for the courage and selflessness of the first responders who risked their lives to protect their fellow citizens.”
With News Wire Services