Boy, 17, Charged With Canada Shooting Murders
A teenager has been charged after four people were shot dead and seven injured in a shooting rampage in Saskatchewan.
Police confirmed the 17-year-old faces four first-degree murder charges, seven attempted murder charges and a firearms charge after the shooting spree at a house and school in La Loche.
La Loche Community School teachers Marie Janvier, 21 and Adam Wood, 35, and brothers Dayne and Drayden Fontaine, aged 17 and 13 respectively, were killed in the shooting.
The gunman can not be named because of his age but a family friend and the town's acting mayor had said the gunman killed his two brothers at home before opening fire at the school.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said the teen shot nine people in the school in around nine minutes before he was arrested at gunpoint by officers who gave chase.
The town's acting mayor Kevin Janvier, who lost his only daughter in the shooting, said the community has been "shattered" by the attack.
Officers said they were called to reports of a "serious situation" at the school, which is in a remote, impoverished area, roughly 600 km (375 miles) from the central city of Saskatoon, shortly after 1pm local time on Friday.
The school wrote on its Facebook page that both the senior and elementary school buildings in the complex were "under lockdown", urging the public to stay away.
Around 150 students were in the school at the time of the attack and Saskatchewan's StarPhoenix newspaper quoted a student who said he was returning from lunch when his friends ran past him urging him to get out.
"Run, bro, run!" Noel Desjarlais-Thomas, 16, said his friends told him as they fled.
"There's a shotgun! There's a shotgun! They were just yelling to me. And then I was hearing those shots, too, so of course I started running."
In a statement Premier Brad Wall said: "Words cannot express my shock and sorrow at the horrific events today in La Loche."
"My thoughts and prayers are with all the victims, their families and friends and all the people of the community," he added.
Gun violence is relatively rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than the United States.
In 1989 a gunman, armed with a rifle and hunting knife, killed 14 college students at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique, before turning the gun on himself.
