Trudeau did not give a motivation for the shooting in La Loche, about 600 km (375 miles) north of the city of Saskatoon.
"Obviously this is every parent's worst nightmare," said Trudeau, who was in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum.
Mass shootings are relatively rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than the United States. With five dead, La Loche would be the country's worst school shooting since 14 college students were killed at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in 1989.
The shooting occurred in the high school, called the Dene Building, and another location in Saskatchewan, Trudeau and Canadian police said. The school remained on lockdown and the total number injured is not yet known, police said.
Police took the suspect into custody outside the school and seized a gun.
La Loche acting Mayor Kevin Janvier told the Canadian Press the incident may have started at the suspect's home.
“I’m not 100 percent sure what’s actually happened but it started at home and ended at the school," Janvier said.
Among Canada’s provinces, Saskatchewan had the highest rate of police-reported family violence in 2014, double the national rate of 243 incidents per 100,000 people, according to a Statistics Canada report on Thursday.
Extra doctors and nurses were sent to treat patients in Keewatin Yatthe Regional Health Authority's 16-bed hospital, said spokesman Dale West. He declined to say how many people had been injured.
Teddy Clark, chief of the Clearwater River Dene Nation, said his daughter told him about the shooting, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
"We're just trying to pull together here and make sense of all this," Clark told CBC television. "It's not a very pretty scene right now."
La Loche student Noel Desjarlais told the CBC that he heard multiple shots fired at the school, which has about 900 students.
"I ran outside the school," Desjarlais said. "There was lots of screaming, there was about six, seven shots before I got outside. I believe there was more shots by the time I did get out."
A cellphone video taken by one resident and broadcast by the CBC showed students walking away from the school across the snow-covered ground and emergency personnel moving in.
In 2014, a teacher expressed concern about violence at the La Loche school, noting that a student who had tried to stab her was put back in her classroom after serving his sentence, and another attacked her at her home.
"That student got 10 months," Janice Wilson told the CBC of the student who tried to stab her in class. "And when he was released he was returned to the school and was put in my classroom."
Stay tune for developing details .
The Roving Reporter
Hi HB
ReplyDeleteHow horribly tragic. We were just listening about this on the ten o'clock news. La Loche is a very isolated village on or near the First Nations reservation way up in northern Saskatchewan. We have heard about this area before because several hundred of the indigenous Indian women who disappeared up there have still not been found or accounted for. The people are very violent there for some reason. A lot of them are related to each other which might explain some of it. The Mounties have never properly investigated all those disappearances. This terrible incident will bring them up there in a hurry and maybe they will do their job adequately this time. We are very ashamed that the Mounties have not investigated the missing women the way they should have. Maybe because they were Indians. It is unforgivable and perhaps if they had done their job properly then, this mass shooting wouldn't have happened to the children today.
I imagine everyone up there has a hunting rifle. They also live in poverty and the government does not give enough money or aid to them. That's another thing Justin said he would fix. That guy has his work cut out for him. So sad for the children and their families.
Great article
Stay well,
Love and hugs
Butterfly
Hi Butterfly ,
DeleteIt is so sad to hear things of this sort happening anywhere , I too think the Mounties didn't do their job , maybe this may be a wake up call but I doubt it very much .
Law enforcement is not like it was a decade ago . I remember when the Mounties would go to the ends of the world to get their man ,but like here with our police , it's just a job to them , they do not care for justice in any form .
Justin inherit a job like Obama and our new governor , B.D. Edwards , it will take time , I think they will get it done . The sad part is so many innocent people will suffer .
Jonny told me your coy-wolves was back , keep your pups inside , Claude told Gil they was not afraid of people and would come in your yard . If your garage is enclosed put some kitty litter in a box for them to use , if not find a designated place for them to go in the house in a litter cox , a small box will do .It's the same all over , poor people get the short end of everything .
If you notice , people think if it do not happen to them , it is all right .
Thank you very much my lady and you stay well .
Hugs and love
HB