woodbuck27
09-14-2006, 02:10 PM
Gunman and young woman die in shooting rampage at Montreal College
Thu Sep 14, 4:59 AM
By Dene Moore And Alexander Panetta
MONTREAL (CP) - A trenchcoat-clad shooter with a scowl and a Mohawk haircut turned a college cafeteria into a combat zone with a commando-style assault that left him and a young woman dead Wednesday.
Carrying an automatic rifle, two other guns, and dressed head to toe in black, the man stormed into the sprawling downtown Dawson College and began coldly cutting down students. Ninteen people were wounded, five critically.
Several published reports identified the gunman as Kimveer Gill, 25, of Laval, north of Montreal. Police would not confirm the gunman's identity.
An online image gallery on Gill's blog contains more than 50 photos depicting the young man in various poses holding a Baretta CX4 Storm semi-automatic rifle and donning a long black trenchcoat and combat boots.
"His name is Trench. you will come to know him as the Angel of Death," he wrote on his vampirefreaks.com profile.
Hundreds of screaming and sobbing students spilled out onto the city streets in the shadow of the fabled Montreal Forum hockey arena after the first shots were fired on Wednesday.
Inside, the cafeteria was transformed for 15 minutes into a shooting gallery in a scene eerily reminiscent of the city's 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre in which 14 women were killed.
The gunman took cover behind a row of vending machines and exchanged gunfire with police while petrified students dropped to the floor in an effort to elude the barrage of bullets.
Surrounded by police, he repeatedly barked a single order each time the officers inched toward him: "Get back! Get back!"
The exchange ended with the attacker slumped on the floor, collapsed in a hail of gunfire.
The dead student was identified in published reports as Anastasia DeSousa, 18, of Montreal. Police would not confirm her identity.
There have been conflicting reports about how the gunman was shot and killed.
Police Chief Yvan Delorme said that officers killed the gunman. However, witnesses told La Presse he shot himself in the head after police a bullet struck him in the leg. Officers then dragged him outside, where he died on the street.
Delorme said the attacker sprayed gunfire at random targets. He said provincial police had been called in to investigate, which is customary in a killing involving the local force.
"The only thing I can say is that he was a young man of Canadian origin," Delorme said.
He said police were able to respond quickly because two officers were already at the college on a drug-related matter when they heard gunshots and took action right away.
Delorme said the lessons learned from the Montreal Massacre about the need to co-ordinate emergency services and act promptly helped save lives.
"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 (today)."
The gunman stormed into the school over the lunch hour, with a scowl on his face and an automatic weapon in his hands.
"He looked really mad," said Mathieu Dominique, 17, who was having a cigarette by the door when the shooter burst in less than three metres away from him.
"He was really into (the) shooting. . . He looked like he really wanted to kill people. . . . It was like, bullet after bullet. It was like a burst - like at least six shots in two seconds."
Another student, Soher Marous, said the gunman said nothing when he entered the college.
"He had a stone-cold face, there was nothing on his face." Marous said. "He didn't yell out any slogans or anything. He just started opening fire. He was a cold-blooded killer."
The gunman continued firing away as he approached the cafeteria. Andrea Barone was sitting there after lunch with his girlfriend when he heard shots ring out.
"At first I thought it was a firecracker," said Barone, 17. "Then I turned around and I saw him. He was dressed in a black trenchcoat and I saw his hand firing a handgun in every direction."
Barone said all the students hit the floor to take cover.
A police officer emerged within seconds from a corner next to the cafeteria and fired on the gunman, he said. The shot missed.
A few more police officers showed up, taking cover behind a wall beside the cafeteria. The gunman was surrounded with his back to the vending machines.
Many students, meanwhile, were trapped in the line of fire.
Barone said it was like a running battle with five or six shots fired in both directions every minute but he said the officers were hesitant to move in because of the students.
Another witness said students began snapping photos and capturing videos from their cell-phone cameras as they watched the scene from a third-floor balcony.
That's when the gunman put a scare into them.
"The shooter sees us - and he shoots upwards," said Gianni Petrella, 17.
"He shoots the ceiling and you could feel little pieces of cement falling down. Dust."
Within minutes, the attacker was hit during a barrage of at least six shots fired into the cafeteria, Barone said. Police then helped the students leave the area, crawling out on their bellies along a wall.
Barone said as they were crawling out toward an exit they saw a girl who had been shot in the torso and who was face down in a pool of blood.
He said officers told them: 'Don't look, don't look. Keep going out.' Montreal police said one young woman died but gave no details.
Police at one point warned students to lie on the ground again amid fears there could be another gunman. Although early reports suggested there could have been several suspects, police said there was only one.
"For now, I am limiting it to one suspect who died after a police intervention on site," Delorme told a news conference.
Delorme did not give details of the gunfire exchange between police and the suspect.
Ambulance and hospital officials said the shooting victims included men and women.
Delorme dismissed suggestions that race or terrorism played a role.
"There's no information that leads us to believe that it's something other than what happened at the scene."
The streets around the school filled with hysterical students in the minutes and hours after the shooting.
Devansh Shri Vastava said he was in the cafeteria when a man dressed in black combat clothing stormed in and began shooting at people.
"He had a laser gun or something, a big rifle, and he just started shooting at people," he said.
"We all ran upstairs. There were cops firing. It was so crazy. I was terrified. The guy was shooting at people randomly. He didn't care he was just shooting at everybody. I just got out."
Derick Osei, 19, said he also saw the gunman.
"I just got out of class and I was walking down the stairs," Osei said.
"He had one of them SWAT army guns and just started shooting up the place. I ran up to the third floor and I looked down and he was still shooting. He was hiding behind the vending machines and he came out with a gun.
Osei said he saw a girl shot in the leg before he ran upstairs to escape.
"At first he was shooting around the caf and he looked up and saw there were people on the third floor and he started aiming for the third floor. I thought 'I am not trying to get shot' so I got out."
The shootings recalled Marc Lepine's murderous rampage at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique school on Dec. 6, 1989, when he opened fire and ended up killing 14 women.
Another shooting in Montreal occurred in Montreal in 1992 when Concordia University professor Valery Fabrikant killed four colleagues.
Ann Lynch, chief of clinical operations at Montreal General Hospital, said 11 patients were brought in, eight in critical condition. Less critically wounded were taken to three other area hospitals as well.
"The nature of the injuries are all gunshot wounds to the abdomen, to the chest, one head injury and also several to the limbs, peripheral limbs, arms and legs," she said.
"At this point we are certainly watching all the patients extremely carefully and certainly the team will be doing its utmost for each and every one of those patients."
Lynch said the emergency room was a steady stream of red-eyed students looking for information about friends.
The hospital had a team of social workers providing support to family members.
In Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the shootings a "cowardly and senseless act."
"Our primary concern right now is to ensure the safety and recovery of all those who were injured during this tragedy," Harper said in a statement.
"On behalf of the government of Canada and all Canadians, our thoughts and prayers are with the injured and their loved ones, and to the students and staff of the college who are all victims of this terrible tragedy."
The shootings disrupted traffic in and around the area and also led to the closure of several subway stations for several hours.
Dawson is a junior college which is attended by students after Grade 11 because there is no Grade 12 in Quebec. The institution is home to about 7,000 students who are usually enrolled in a two-year pre-university program or a three-year technical program.
In Montreal, Premier Jean Charest called it a sad day.
"Today there wasn't a Quebecer who didn't stop what they were doing to find out what was happening at Dawson College," he said after arriving from Quebec City.
"Our life was literally stopped today."
School officials said the college will remain closed until Monday.
Thu Sep 14, 4:59 AM
By Dene Moore And Alexander Panetta
MONTREAL (CP) - A trenchcoat-clad shooter with a scowl and a Mohawk haircut turned a college cafeteria into a combat zone with a commando-style assault that left him and a young woman dead Wednesday.
Carrying an automatic rifle, two other guns, and dressed head to toe in black, the man stormed into the sprawling downtown Dawson College and began coldly cutting down students. Ninteen people were wounded, five critically.
Several published reports identified the gunman as Kimveer Gill, 25, of Laval, north of Montreal. Police would not confirm the gunman's identity.
An online image gallery on Gill's blog contains more than 50 photos depicting the young man in various poses holding a Baretta CX4 Storm semi-automatic rifle and donning a long black trenchcoat and combat boots.
"His name is Trench. you will come to know him as the Angel of Death," he wrote on his vampirefreaks.com profile.
Hundreds of screaming and sobbing students spilled out onto the city streets in the shadow of the fabled Montreal Forum hockey arena after the first shots were fired on Wednesday.
Inside, the cafeteria was transformed for 15 minutes into a shooting gallery in a scene eerily reminiscent of the city's 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre in which 14 women were killed.
The gunman took cover behind a row of vending machines and exchanged gunfire with police while petrified students dropped to the floor in an effort to elude the barrage of bullets.
Surrounded by police, he repeatedly barked a single order each time the officers inched toward him: "Get back! Get back!"
The exchange ended with the attacker slumped on the floor, collapsed in a hail of gunfire.
The dead student was identified in published reports as Anastasia DeSousa, 18, of Montreal. Police would not confirm her identity.
There have been conflicting reports about how the gunman was shot and killed.
Police Chief Yvan Delorme said that officers killed the gunman. However, witnesses told La Presse he shot himself in the head after police a bullet struck him in the leg. Officers then dragged him outside, where he died on the street.
Delorme said the attacker sprayed gunfire at random targets. He said provincial police had been called in to investigate, which is customary in a killing involving the local force.
"The only thing I can say is that he was a young man of Canadian origin," Delorme said.
He said police were able to respond quickly because two officers were already at the college on a drug-related matter when they heard gunshots and took action right away.
Delorme said the lessons learned from the Montreal Massacre about the need to co-ordinate emergency services and act promptly helped save lives.
"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 (today)."
The gunman stormed into the school over the lunch hour, with a scowl on his face and an automatic weapon in his hands.
"He looked really mad," said Mathieu Dominique, 17, who was having a cigarette by the door when the shooter burst in less than three metres away from him.
"He was really into (the) shooting. . . He looked like he really wanted to kill people. . . . It was like, bullet after bullet. It was like a burst - like at least six shots in two seconds."
Another student, Soher Marous, said the gunman said nothing when he entered the college.
"He had a stone-cold face, there was nothing on his face." Marous said. "He didn't yell out any slogans or anything. He just started opening fire. He was a cold-blooded killer."
The gunman continued firing away as he approached the cafeteria. Andrea Barone was sitting there after lunch with his girlfriend when he heard shots ring out.
"At first I thought it was a firecracker," said Barone, 17. "Then I turned around and I saw him. He was dressed in a black trenchcoat and I saw his hand firing a handgun in every direction."
Barone said all the students hit the floor to take cover.
A police officer emerged within seconds from a corner next to the cafeteria and fired on the gunman, he said. The shot missed.
A few more police officers showed up, taking cover behind a wall beside the cafeteria. The gunman was surrounded with his back to the vending machines.
Many students, meanwhile, were trapped in the line of fire.
Barone said it was like a running battle with five or six shots fired in both directions every minute but he said the officers were hesitant to move in because of the students.
Another witness said students began snapping photos and capturing videos from their cell-phone cameras as they watched the scene from a third-floor balcony.
That's when the gunman put a scare into them.
"The shooter sees us - and he shoots upwards," said Gianni Petrella, 17.
"He shoots the ceiling and you could feel little pieces of cement falling down. Dust."
Within minutes, the attacker was hit during a barrage of at least six shots fired into the cafeteria, Barone said. Police then helped the students leave the area, crawling out on their bellies along a wall.
Barone said as they were crawling out toward an exit they saw a girl who had been shot in the torso and who was face down in a pool of blood.
He said officers told them: 'Don't look, don't look. Keep going out.' Montreal police said one young woman died but gave no details.
Police at one point warned students to lie on the ground again amid fears there could be another gunman. Although early reports suggested there could have been several suspects, police said there was only one.
"For now, I am limiting it to one suspect who died after a police intervention on site," Delorme told a news conference.
Delorme did not give details of the gunfire exchange between police and the suspect.
Ambulance and hospital officials said the shooting victims included men and women.
Delorme dismissed suggestions that race or terrorism played a role.
"There's no information that leads us to believe that it's something other than what happened at the scene."
The streets around the school filled with hysterical students in the minutes and hours after the shooting.
Devansh Shri Vastava said he was in the cafeteria when a man dressed in black combat clothing stormed in and began shooting at people.
"He had a laser gun or something, a big rifle, and he just started shooting at people," he said.
"We all ran upstairs. There were cops firing. It was so crazy. I was terrified. The guy was shooting at people randomly. He didn't care he was just shooting at everybody. I just got out."
Derick Osei, 19, said he also saw the gunman.
"I just got out of class and I was walking down the stairs," Osei said.
"He had one of them SWAT army guns and just started shooting up the place. I ran up to the third floor and I looked down and he was still shooting. He was hiding behind the vending machines and he came out with a gun.
Osei said he saw a girl shot in the leg before he ran upstairs to escape.
"At first he was shooting around the caf and he looked up and saw there were people on the third floor and he started aiming for the third floor. I thought 'I am not trying to get shot' so I got out."
The shootings recalled Marc Lepine's murderous rampage at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique school on Dec. 6, 1989, when he opened fire and ended up killing 14 women.
Another shooting in Montreal occurred in Montreal in 1992 when Concordia University professor Valery Fabrikant killed four colleagues.
Ann Lynch, chief of clinical operations at Montreal General Hospital, said 11 patients were brought in, eight in critical condition. Less critically wounded were taken to three other area hospitals as well.
"The nature of the injuries are all gunshot wounds to the abdomen, to the chest, one head injury and also several to the limbs, peripheral limbs, arms and legs," she said.
"At this point we are certainly watching all the patients extremely carefully and certainly the team will be doing its utmost for each and every one of those patients."
Lynch said the emergency room was a steady stream of red-eyed students looking for information about friends.
The hospital had a team of social workers providing support to family members.
In Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the shootings a "cowardly and senseless act."
"Our primary concern right now is to ensure the safety and recovery of all those who were injured during this tragedy," Harper said in a statement.
"On behalf of the government of Canada and all Canadians, our thoughts and prayers are with the injured and their loved ones, and to the students and staff of the college who are all victims of this terrible tragedy."
The shootings disrupted traffic in and around the area and also led to the closure of several subway stations for several hours.
Dawson is a junior college which is attended by students after Grade 11 because there is no Grade 12 in Quebec. The institution is home to about 7,000 students who are usually enrolled in a two-year pre-university program or a three-year technical program.
In Montreal, Premier Jean Charest called it a sad day.
"Today there wasn't a Quebecer who didn't stop what they were doing to find out what was happening at Dawson College," he said after arriving from Quebec City.
"Our life was literally stopped today."
School officials said the college will remain closed until Monday.