Mourners gather at a memorial for the victims of the mass school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.Jesse Winter/The Globe and Mail
Lunchtime came and went on Tuesday like it did on any other weekday in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.
Students from the local high school lined up to buy their meals at the Freshmart on Front Street, “like they usually do,” said Paul Landrecht, who works at the store.
But not long after they returned to class, an ordinary day in the northeastern B.C. community of 2,400 became a national nightmare.
A shooting at the high school Tuesday afternoon left seven dead, including the shooter from what appeared to be a self-inflicted injury.
Two more victims, a 39-year-old female and 11-year-old male, were found dead in a local residence and are believed to be the shooter’s mother and stepbrother.
At the school, the victims included a 39-year-old female educator, three 12-year-old female students and two male students, aged 12 and 13.
Police have not released the victims’ names, but some have emerged from families posting pleas for help and prayers on social media, and have subsequently been confirmed by The Globe and Mail.
Their stories paint a picture of a small, close-knit community torn apart by an act of shocking violence.
Jennifer Strang was the mother of the 18-year-old shooter. Nothing feels real since learning of Tuesday’s tragedy, said a cousin of Ms. Strang. The Globe is not naming her because she fears personal and professional repercussions for being associated with the shooter.
The cousin was raised in New Brunswick and Ms. Strang in Newfoundland – where members of the Strang family still reside. When Ms. Strang was a child and her family relocated to New Brunswick for work, the two cousins grew closer.
When they were older and Ms. Strang had moved to Tumbler Ridge, the two stayed in touch, bonding over selling cosmetics. She remembered Ms. Strang as someone who cared deeply about her kids, loved doing makeup and was crafty.
Abel Mwansa Jr. was one of the boys killed on Tuesday. Christopher Bwalya, a pastor with the Burning Bush Ministries in Kasama, Zambia, said he knew Abel from a young age. The Mwansa family relocated to Canada a few years ago to pursue work – but still spoke with Mr. Bwalya daily, the pastor said.
“I’ve been privileged, by God’s grace, to pastor this family for close to 11 years now, and practically saw Abel from being a toddler to what he became up to until the time that they relocated to work in Canada,” Mr. Bwalya said.
“Abel was very respectful. Abel was a loving character. Abel was somebody that was willing to render a hand,” Mr. Bwalya said. “Abel was a very promising young man.”
12-year-old Maya Gebala.Supplied
The outlook is unclear for 12-year-old Maya Gebala, whose mother, Cia Edmonds, posted Tuesday on Facebook that she was fighting for her life in a Vancouver hospital after suffering gunshot wounds to the head and neck.
“It was just a normal day. What happened,” Ms. Edmonds wrote.
On Wednesday, Ms. Edmonds posted an update on her daughter’s condition, saying she’d been warned “that the damage to her brain was too much for her to endure, and she wouldn’t make the night.”
Ms. Edmonds posted a photo of Maya in her hospital bed, her eyes closed and her head heavily bandaged.
“I can feel her in my heart. I can feel her saying it’s going to be OK,” Ms. Edmonds wrote. “Our baby needs a miracle.”
Ms. Edmonds’s cousin, Krysta Hunt, has started an online fundraiser for the 12-year-old. She wrote that Maya underwent surgery on Tuesday to help stop the bleeding, and had made it through the first night.
“She is such a fighter,” Ms. Hunt wrote on Wednesday. “We are still in a very risky state, and care and long-term recovery is unknown.”
A family is mourning their 12-year-old daughter, Kylie Smith, who was killed in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting on Tuesday. Kylie's father Lance Younge said he recalled his final moment with her as he saw her off to school with her brother Ethan, unaware it was the last time he would see her alive.
Reuters
As of Wednesday evening, the fundraiser had received more than $100,000 in donations.
When Rev. Gerald Krauss got the alert that there was an active shooter in Tumbler Ridge, his first reaction was disbelief. “I thought, really? In Tumbler Ridge?” Not long after, the wail of sirens confirmed the worst.
Once the instructions to stay inside were lifted, Rev. Krauss and his wife, Tracy Krauss, who co-pastors New Life Assembly church with him, headed to the nearby community centre. That’s where they were informed students from the school were gathering, and where parents were searching for their children.
Opinion: Some thank yous for helping us through a day of horror
“Some parents were finding their children, and some were not,” Rev. Krauss said.
He and his wife were among those who stayed out in the community until 4 a.m., comforting families whose children never arrived.
“It’s a beautiful town, and now it’s all changed,” he said.
Wednesday was spent “learning of each other’s tragedies and experiences very slowly,” Mr. Landrecht, the Freshmart worker, said in a written exchange with The Globe. “We went to work and were advised that one of our co-workers had lost their grandson … My neighbour, a few doors down from me, advised me that his son had gone to school that day and seen his best friend shot in the head.”
A private tragedy has now “become very public,” he said. “We’re really praying for our little town, that we’ll find healing somehow in the midst of all of this.”
With a report from Justine Hunter