Nine people are dead and at least 27 others wounded after a mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and a connected residence in northeast British Columbia on Tuesday, in what is already being called one of Canada’s deadliest school attacks in nearly four decades.
The suspected shooter, described by authorities as a woman with brown hair wearing a dress, was also found dead at the school from what the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said appeared to be a self-inflicted injury, bringing the total death toll to 10.
It is the kind of tragedy that Canadians have long watched unfold south of the border, one that felt, as British Columbia Premier David Eby put it, like “the kind of thing that feels like it happens in other places, and not close to home.”
On Tuesday afternoon, it happened at home.
What We Know So Far
The RCMP received reports of an active shooter at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School at approximately 1:20 p.m. Pacific Time. Officers from the small local detachment responded within two minutes, according to British Columbia’s public safety minister, Nina Krieger.
Inside the school, police found six victims dead from gunshot wounds and the suspected shooter deceased from a self-inflicted injury. A seventh victim died while being transported to hospital. Two more people were airlifted to area hospitals with serious or life-threatening injuries, while roughly 25 others were assessed and triaged at a local medical center for non-life-threatening injuries.
During the investigation, police identified a second crime scene at a residence in Tumbler Ridge believed to be connected to the school shooting. Two additional victims were found dead inside the home.
An emergency alert went out to residents’ phones around 2:15 p.m., instructing the community to shelter in place. That alert was not lifted until 5:45 p.m., after police confirmed they believed there were no additional suspects or ongoing threats.
Hours Of Terror Inside The School
Tumbler Ridge Secondary School serves roughly 175 students in grades 7 through 12. For more than two hours on Tuesday, those students became trapped in what one called a scene he had “only seen across a TV.”
Darian Quist, a Grade 12 student, told CBC Radio West that an alarm sounded shortly after he arrived in class, announcing a lockdown and instructing students to close classroom doors. What followed was a harrowing wait.
“We got tables and barricaded the doors,” Quist said. Students remained behind those makeshift barriers for more than two hours before police escorted them out. During that time, images from the scene began circulating on students’ phones.
“The reality of it all is starting to set in,” Quist said. “I believe I knew somebody, but everything is still very fresh.”
A Grade 9 student told Global News he hid in a classroom closet with other children, not knowing what was happening outside.
About 100 students and staff were eventually evacuated safely from the building.
A Small Town Where Everyone Is Family
Tumbler Ridge is the kind of place where the mayor knows every resident by name. Nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, more than 1,100 kilometers north of Vancouver, the town has a population of fewer than 2,700 people. It is small, remote and tight-knit, the kind of community built around resource industries and resilience.
Mayor Darryl Krakowka said he “broke down” when he learned how many people had been killed.
“It’s devastating,” he said. “I have lived here for 18 years. I probably know every one of the victims. I don’t call them residents. I call them family.”
Town Councillor Chris Norbury, whose wife is a teacher at the school and was among those held in lockdown, told CBC’s The National that the loss is “almost unbearable.”
“I’ve seen them grow up,” Norbury said of the victims. “We sang stories together, we read books together. I saw them everywhere. And knowing that I can’t see them anymore, that we won’t see them anymore, that their family has to live with this incredible loss, is almost unbearable.”
Krakowka noted that the community has endured hardship before, from the collapse of its mining economy in the 2000s to wildfire threats in recent years. “We’ve always come together, to stand together, to survive, and I hope we can fall back on that experience,” he said.
Motive Unknown, Investigation Underway
RCMP Superintendent Ken Floyd, the North District Commander, said investigators believe they have identified the shooter but would not release a name, citing privacy concerns and standard procedure in British Columbia. Police have also not confirmed the ages of the victims or disclosed what type of weapon was used.
“We are not in a place now to be able to understand why or what may have motivated this tragedy,” Floyd said. “I think we will struggle to determine the ‘why,’ but we will try our best to determine what transpired.”
The investigation has been handed over to the RCMP’s Major Crimes Unit.
National Response
The shooting triggered an immediate national response. Prime Minister Mark Carney postponed his departure for the Munich Security Conference to address the tragedy, issuing a statement expressing condolences and “gratitude for the courage and selflessness of the first responders who risked their lives to protect their fellow citizens.”
Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre called himself “devastated” and offered condolences. Premier Eby described it as an “unimaginable tragedy” and pledged the provincial government would “ensure every possible support for community members in the coming days.”
“Our hearts are in Tumbler Ridge tonight with the families of those who have lost loved ones,” Eby said.
All elementary and secondary schools in Tumbler Ridge will remain closed for the rest of the week.
A Rare Horror In A Country That Thought It Was Different
Mass shootings are rare in Canada, a country with far stricter gun laws than the United States. It is illegal to purchase assault-style rifles in Canada, and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced a freeze on the buying and selling of handguns in 2022.
Still, Canada has not been immune. In April 2020, a gunman disguised as a police officer killed 22 people in a 13-hour rampage across Nova Scotia, the deadliest mass shooting in the country’s modern history. And just last year, a man drove an SUV into a crowd at a Filipino street festival in Vancouver, killing 11.
Tuesday’s attack at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School is the deadliest attack connected to a Canadian school since the Ecole Polytechnique massacre in Montreal on December 6, 1989, when a gunman killed 14 women and wounded 13 others before taking his own life.
In 2023, roughly 38% of homicides in Canada involved a firearm, compared with 76% in the United States, according to an analysis by Statistics Canada using police-reported data from both countries.
The numbers underscore a real difference. But in Tumbler Ridge on Tuesday, the gap between “there” and “here” collapsed entirely.
This is a developing story and will be updated as new information becomes available.