MONTREAL - A man in a black trench coat and a mohawk haircut opened fire Wednesday at a downtown Montreal college, slaying a young woman and wounding at least 19 other people before police shot and killed him, witnesses and authorities said.
Police dismissed suggestions that terrorism played a role in the lunch-hour attack at Dawson College, where scores of panicked students fled into the streets after the shooting began. Some had clothes stained with blood; others cried and clung to each other. Two nearby shopping centers and a daycare center also were evacuated.
"I was terrified. The guy was shooting at people randomly. He didn't care, he was just shooting at everybody," said student Devansh Smri Vastava. "There were cops firing. It was so crazy."
Wow,talk about people caring.Thanks,as for me,no one I knew got hurt.THang God for that.But for those poor people who did and for those who knew/know them,my condolences.
Also the metro station located a few minutes away from the college was evacuated and the main metro just went on through Atwater metro without stopping and only stopped at the next metro.One shooter was shot and killed by police and another shot himself.
It is so sad when people look at themselves as more powerful than others just because they have guns. If he was so obsessed with killing, why not shoot at Police or other armed people. He was just a coward. My condolences to the family of the deceased victim and best wishes for the wounded.
Police had earlier believed there were as many as four gunmen, as shots reportedly continued to be heard.
The 20-year-old female victim died in hospital from her wounds. Five people admitted to Montreal General Hospital remain in critical condition, four are listed in serious condition and two are stable.
A number of officers surrounded the school with guns drawn, while others helped to evacuate students from inside the English-language CEGEP school which has about 10,000 students. Most are between the ages of 16 and 18.
Today's incident is horrifyingly reminiscent of another school shooting in Montreal. On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lepine killed 14 engineering students at the Ecole Polytechnique.
Reading about all this,makes me scared for the days that I send my children to school.I just hope that since this second school shooting,the cops will make it harder to buy guns.
Well,I know that,but guns should be extremely hard to buy.But I know that downtown in Montreal,you can buy guns for a few hundred dollars,maybe even less now.I refuse to allow my daughters to play with guns,even water guns.She wants a toy,fine,pick up a freaking barbie. As for you Oleg,knock it off.You want to advertise,try in a forum other than one with respect to the people that got hurt or killed.
Obviously these are mentally ill people since they were not trained terrorists...and nobody in their "right" mind would commit these type crimes..the families of the shooters will suffer and probably already have been for few years, as well as the families of the victims now..sad times for all the innocent..whether it be by serial killers, or terrorists or soldiers, the true victims are always the families and friends, not the dead!
I just spoke with my sister,and her ex was in class and walked out when he heard the gun fire,and he seen the woman(he knows her well)get shot in the head.And two of his best friends were shot one in the leg and one in the arm.Imagine walking out of your classroom and seeing that.
I am sorry to say ,There have been killers on this earth sence the beginning of time. Always people who think the world should revolve around them and no one else matters. Their reasoning is (do it my way or die) . And they will be here until the end of time . Yes I feel a loss when these things happen because we are all tied together and need to reach out to those who are hurting
the dawson shooting was so sad, i was just at home and watched the news and found out that some crazy goth guy just starts shooting downtown, atleast ive learnt not to go to that college, whats even more sad is that the killer took the life of an 18 year old girl with her.
Stan...Oh U know George W Bush too!...hard to beleive he even became the US president..I think he must have put something in our water supply to get the votes the 2nd election after fixing the first election..
this is the first time i see this on the news is in Canada school shooting,over here in the US i don't even remember how many time it hapen already.i think the last time school shooting it was in MN some where,now too many kids playing violent video game and smoking too many dam crack and fu.cking up their head,and sometime they think they're in the video game or something.in the video game they have RESET BUTTON when u dead u can come back alive and play again,just press reset button.now this is real life shooting there no reset button for them the only button they get is the DEAD ONE...now they dead how stupid so young so much future ahead of them...and i feel bad for the girl who had die and those who got hurts...ONE PERSON WENT TO SCHOOL AND NEVER COME HOME AGAIN AND THAT SAD....
If people were allowed to carry concealed weapons (with proper training of course) as is the case in a couple of states, how many shots do you think this guy would have gotten off before being shot himself? Undoubtedly this event will bring up gun ownership debates again.
MONTREAL - A 25-year-old man who mounted a deadly shooting rampage at a downtown Montreal college had posted pictures of himself on the Internet with a rifle and said he was feeling "crazy" and "postal" and was drinking whiskey hours before the attack. ADVERTISEMENT
The man, identified by police as Kimveer Gill, also said on a blog that he liked to play a role-playing Internet game about the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado and wanted to die "in a hail of gunfire."
In the end, Gill -- dressed in a black trench coat like the Columbine shooters -- put his own gun to his head and pulled the trigger during a shootout with officers at Dawson College on Wednesday, police said.
Gill, wielding a rapid-fire rifle and two other weapons, had already wounded 20 other people by the time he took his own life. One of his victims, an 18-year-old woman, later died. Four others remained in critical condition Thursday, including three in extremely critical condition and one in a deep coma.
The Internet postings and neighbors' accounts reveal an angry, solitary young man who lived with his mother in Laval, near Montreal. He sported a mohawk, dressed in black and was filled with hatred for everyone from jocks to preppies and everything from country music to hip-hop. He once worked for a carpet company and more recently an auto parts business.
"Work sucks ... school sucks ... life sucks ... what else can I say? ... Life is a video game you've got to die sometime," he wrote in his profile for a Web site called vampirefreaks.com.
Authorities searched Gill's home Wednesday evening and seized his computer and other belongings.
"I don't know what they found in the computer," said a woman who answered the phone at Gill's home and said she was his mother. "They took everything."
She described her son as "a good man."
"Just ask anybody. Ask the neighbors. He was a good son," the woman told The Associated Press. She refused to give her name.
A neighbor across the street said he was a loner.
"There were never any friends," Louise Leykauf said. "He kept to himself. He always wore dark clothing."
Another neighbor, Mariola Trutschnigg, said she noticed a changed in his appearance in recent months when he "started wearing a mohawk and black clothes."
In postings on vampirefreaks.com, blogs in Gill's name show more than 50 photos depicting the young man in various poses holding a rifle or a knife and wearing a black trench coat and combat boots.
One photo has a tombstone bearing his name and the epitaph: "Lived fast died young. Left a mangled corpse."
The last of six journal entries Wednesday was posted at 10:41 a.m, about two hours before Gill died at Dawson.
He said on the site that he felt "crazy" and was drinking whiskey that morning and described his mood as "postal" the night before.
"Whiskey in the morning, mmmmmm, mmmmmmmmm, good !! ," he wrote.
"His name is Trench. you will come to know him as the Angel of Death," Gill wrote at another point on his vampirefreaks.com profile. "He is not a people person. He has met a handful of people in his life who are decent. But he finds the vast majority to be worthless, no good, conniving, betraying, lying, deceptive."
This inscription is below a picture of Gill aiming a gun at the camera: "I think I have an obbsetion (sic) with guns ... muahahaha."
"Anger and hatred simmers within me," said another caption below a picture of Gill grimacing.
He wrote that he is 6-foot-1, was born in Montreal and is of Indian heritage. It was unclear whether he meant east Indian or American Indian, but Gill is a common name in India.
He said his weakness is laziness and that he fears nothing. Responding to the question, "How do you want to die?" Gill replied "like Romeo and Juliet -- or in a hail of gunfire."
Gill repeatedly said on his blogs that he loved black trench coats. He wore a black trench coat during the shooting and opened fire in the cafeteria just as Columbine students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris did in 1999.
He also maintained an online blog, similar to Klebold and Harris, devoted to Goth culture, heavy metal music such as Marilyn Manson, guns and journal entries expressing hatred against authority figures and "society."
He said he liked to play "Super Columbine Massacre," an Internet-based computer game that simulates the April 20, 1999, shootings at the Colorado high school when Klebold and Harris killed 13 people and then themselves.
Gill complained that a video shooting game, "Postal 2," was too childish. He wanted one that allowed him to kill more and go "beserk."
"I want them to make a game so realistic, that it looks and feels like it's actually happening," he wrote in his blog.
Danny Ledonne, the creator of "Super Columbine Massacre," posted a message of sympathy on his site.
"I am, like most, saddened by the news of the recent shooting at Dawson College. I extend my condolences to those affected by this painful event," Ledonne wrote.
A 23-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl accused in a triple murder in Medicine Hat, Alberta, earlier this year also had profiles on vampirefreaks.com.
Montreal Police Chief Yvan Delorme said the lessons learned from other mass shootings had taught police to try to stop such assaults as quickly as possible.
"Before our technique was to establish a perimeter around the place and wait for the SWAT team. Now the first police officers go right inside. The way they acted saved lives," he said.
Delorme said some officers were at the school on an unrelated matter when the shooting began and reinforcements were sent in.
Witnesses said Gill started shooting outside the college, then entered the second-floor cafeteria and opened fire without uttering a word. Anastasia DeSousa, 18, of Montreal was killed.
Police initially said Gill shot himself but later Wednesday they said they thought officers killed Gill during an exchange of fire. On Thursday, however, Francois Dore of the Quebec provincial police said "preliminary results of the autopsy showed that he died of self-inflicted wounds." Dore said police shot Gill in the arm before he turned his gun on himself.
Canada's worst mass shooting took place in Montreal when gunman Marc Lepine, 25, killed 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnic on Dec. 6, 1989, before shooting himself.
That shooting spurred efforts for new gun laws achieved mainly as the results of efforts by survivors and relatives of Lepine's victims.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it was too early to begin questioning how tougher gun control laws might have averted Wednesday's rampage, but that current laws clearly did not work. "The laws we have didn't prevent this tragedy, which is why our government will be in the future -- because of this incident and many others -- looking to make our laws more effective," Harper said.
Canadian laws prohibit the possession of unregistered handguns, and the rules for ownership of registered guns are stringent. Many politicians and police contend illegal guns flowing across the U.S.-Canada border are behind a recent spike in firearm violence.
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Associated Press writer Rob Gillies contributed to this report from Toronto.
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