January 23, 2016•Update: January 23, 2016
By Barry Ellsworth
TRENTON, Ont.
Authorities remained tight-lipped Saturday about a fatal shooting that took four lives and wounded several others in a small remote Indian community in northern Canada.
The shootings on Friday sent shock waves through the town of La Loche in the province of Saskatchewan.
A male suspect is in custody.
The shootings took place first at a residence, then at the local high school.
The Associated Press reported that the town’s acting mayor Kevin Janvier said his 23-year-old daughter Marie, a teaching assistant at the school, was killed in the incident.
Janvier said police told him that two of the victims were the suspect’s siblings, shot at the residence.
A family friend said among the dead were the suspect’s younger brothers, according to media reports.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported Saturday that three of the four victims have been identified by family members.
Along with Marie Janvier, brothers Dayne and Drayden Fontaine are dead. "I feel like I'm in a nightmare and I want to wake up," Marie's aunt Diane Janvier told the CBC.
Tenth grader Noel Desjarlais-Thomas, who ran as shots rang out at the school, forwarded a computer screenshot to the Canadian Press wire service.
It depicted a conversation between a young male and his friends. “Just killed two ppl [people],” the male wrote. “Bout to shoot up the school.”
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) refused to confirm facts surrounding the incident, citing an “ongoing investigation”.
But an RCMP spokesman said at a press conference Friday night that four victims had died, more were airlifted to a hospital, a suspect was arrested in front of the school and a firearm was confiscated.
More than 100 community members assembled Friday night to hold vigils at the school and a local church.
Mass shootings are unusual in Canada, a country with strict gun laws.
