A budding scientist. An aspiring artist. A keen hockey player.
Tumbler Ridge, B.C., a remote mining community of 2,400 people tucked against the foothills of the Rockies, is mourning in the aftermath of a mass shooting at the town’s secondary school on Tuesday.
Eight people were killed, including five 12- and 13-year-old children at the school, an educator and two family members at a nearby home. The youngest victim was the teenaged shooter’s 11-year-old half-brother, and two others sustained significant injuries. The shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Hundreds assembled in the town’s centre for a vigil on Wednesday evening to remember those killed.
On Thursday, the RCMP published the names of the eight victims. While the RCMP initially said 25 people had been injured, it subsequently revised that down to two people who were airlifted to hospital in Vancouver.
Relatives have posted tributes to social media, and friends have launched fundraisers to support the grieving families.
Here are the stories of the victims of the Tumbler Ridge shooting.
Abel Mwansa Jr., 12
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Abel was among the five children killed at the secondary school. In a recent tribute on Facebook, his father, Abel Mwansa, wrote that he saw “a leader, an engineer, also a scientist” in his son. Mr. Mwansa recalled the day he suggested homeschooling, to which his son cried that he loved being at school. “I was broken when I saw you packed in that BLACK BAG lifeless and zipped up,” the father wrote.
On Thursday, Abel’s mother posted a short video to Facebook showing her son pushing a baby in a high chair around a room. “Please Abel come and take care of your baby brother,” she wrote.
Frank Amadi, a friend of the family who works as a paramedic in Tumbler Ridge, described the boy as kind and respectful: “He would always greet you with a smile and wanted to know how you and your family are doing,” Mr. Amadi wrote in a post for a GoFundMe fundraising effort set up for the family.
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, he told The Globe and Mail.
“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.”
Kylie Smith, 12
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Kylie’s father, Lance Younge, recalled his final moment with her as he saw her off to school Tuesday morning.
“I let her go to school with her brother Ethan in the morning,” he said in an interview with Reuters. “I soaked in that moment watching them walk in the door together, for whatever reason. I didn’t know it would be the last time they would go to school together.”
Mr. Younge described the excruciating moments after the shooting when the family was trying to find out where their daughter was.
“Police didn’t tell us anything. We had to find out through the community and through kids …” he said.
Kylie's father 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
Fighting back tears, he delivered a message for other parents.
“Hold your kids tight. Tell them you love them every day. You never know.”
In a statement released by the RCMP, Kylie’s family said she loved her friends, family and going to school. “Kylie was the light in our family,” they said. “She was a talented artist and had dreams of going to art school in the big city of Toronto. Rest in paradise, sweet girl, our family will never be the same without you.”
An online fundraiser launched by Kylie’s aunt, Shanon Dycke, describes her as a “beautiful, kind, innocent soul,” and says the family’s world has “crumbled.”
Zoey Benoit, 12
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Lori Hayer embraced her nephew when he safely made it out of Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. Her son was next. “I was so relieved that they were safe and with us,” she wrote on Facebook on Thursday, two days after the mass shooting at the school. “And then there was my beautiful daughter that we waited for and never showed after them. We didn’t know if she was hurt or where she was.”
Hours passed. “Then here came the news that my daughter Zoey Renee Anne Benoit was one of the deceased,” Ms. Hayer wrote. “She was such a beautiful, loved, strong minded 12 year old.”
Ms. Hayer did not return a message seeking comment. The RCMP confirmed Zoey Benoit was among the students killed in the school Tuesday.
Zoey loved art and playing with her siblings. “She also had a beautiful singing voice that she didn’t realize that she had. She was our baby, our girl and our brave hulk,” Ms. Hayer posted on Facebook, along with a collage of photos showing the bespectacled tween smiling with family.
And Zoey loved spending time with them. “She was so resilient, vibrant, smart, caring and the strongest little girl you could meet,” the family said in a statement released by the RCMP. “She brought so much laughter and smiles in her presence.”
Ezekiel Schofield, 13
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A keen hockey player, Ezekiel played forward for the Tumbler Ridge Raptors U13 hockey team.
His grandfather, Peter Schofield, posted about the loss of his grandson on Facebook.
“Everything feels so surreal. The tears just keep flowing,” the post said. “So many young lives were ended so needlessly. Our hearts are broken not only for Ezekiel, but for every family affected by this tragedy. Please keep all of Tumbler Ridge in your thoughts and prayers as the community begins to navigate the days, weeks, and years ahead. We feel absolutely broken.”
Ticaria Lampert, 12
HO/The Canadian Press
One of eight siblings, Ticaria Lampert − better known by friends and family as Tiki − was part of a big family in a small town.
Ticaria was raised by her mother, Sarah, who described her daughter as “a tiki torch powered by love and happiness.”
“She rarely knew fear. Innocent should have been her name,” Sarah told reporters on Thursday evening, sitting at a table in Tumbler Ridge Community Centre with her daughter, Niveya. A photo of their family sat on the table in front of her with a tissue box to her right.
Ticaria was two months short of her 13th birthday and was “the dork of all dorks” who had a “Santa sack of every bad dad joke you could think of.”
Speaking through tears and with another daughter by her side,Sarah Lampert said Ticaria was a tiki torch powered by love and happiness.
Life at home has been irreversibly altered, Sarah said. She described their large family as a “functioning cell” where no one goes unnoticed. Ticaria’s absence has left them shattered, she said, wiping away tears.
“Getting in the van and turning around and not having a full headcount is going to be hard. Everything is hard right now.”
Shannda Aviugana-Durand, 39
Shannda Aviugana-Durand was an education assistant at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. Her uncle Johnny Aviugana, who is Inuvialuit, wrote on Facebook this week that he was “feeling emotionally drained” from the news that his niece was one of the victims of the mass shooting.
The BC General Employees’ Union released a statement saying they are deeply saddened by the loss of one of their members, Ms. Aviugana-Durand.
“We are grieving the profound loss of one of our union members whose life was taken in this terrible event,” said the union. “We extend our deepest condolences to the family, friends, coworkers, and all those whose lives she touched.”
Ms. Aviugana-Durand’s aunt Clara Aviugana also posted on social media. “My heart is broken,” she said.
Jennifer Jacobs, 39
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A cousin of Ms. Jacobs remembered her as someone who cared deeply about her kids, loved doing makeup and enjoyed making videos. Ms. Jacobs, who also went by the last name Strang, was the mother of the 18-year-old shooter.
Ms. Jacobs and the cousin had grown close when the family temporarily moved from Newfoundland to New Brunswick for work in the 1990s.
The last conversation the two had was about making a video for the wedding anniversary of Ms. Jacobs’s mother during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Though Ms. Jacobs’s life wasn’t always easy, the cousin said, there was nothing she knew of to indicate the tragedy to come.
The Globe is not naming the cousin because she fears personal and professional repercussions for being associated with the shooter.
Ms. Jacobs was found dead in her home along with 11-year-old Emmett, believed to be the shooter’s half-brother.
Emmett Jacobs, 11
HO/The Canadian Press
Last March, Emmett Jacobs gathered with some of his friends at the Western Steakhouse in Tumbler Ridge. They came together to celebrate his birthday.
Ten months later, Emmett lay dead inside his home, slain alongside his mother, Jennifer.
Emmett was 11, the fourth of five children in a blended family.
In his brief life, Emmett lived on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, in Newfoundland and then, for the last few years, in Tumbler Ridge, where property records show the family initially lived with grandparents.
His mother, Ms. Jacobs, bought her own two-storey home nearly three years ago, records show.
An 18-second video of Emmett’s birthday shows a slice of cake delivered to him, a candle flickering over a drizzle of chocolate. Dressed in a colourful coat, his hair trimmed short, he sticks out a finger to taste the sweet confection.
He is asked for a birthday wish and leans over to blow out the candle.
“I thought about it in my head,” he says, then reaches out his finger for another taste.
With reports from Zosia Bielski, Dave McGinn, Maura Forrest, Carrie Tait, Matthew Scace, Alanna Smith, Lindsay Jones, Mariya Postelnyak, Nathan VanderKlippe and Tom Cardoso
Tracy Krauss, co-pastor at New Life Assembly church in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., recounts sitting with the families of students at the school where Tuesday’s mass shooting took place, before some learned their children had been killed. She says the community needs love as it reels from the violence.
The Canadian Press