RCMP take up position outside a home, where two additional victims were found dead.Trent Ernst/Supplied
The shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., is hitting close to home for some Canadian Olympians competing at the Milan Cortina Winter Games.
As Team Canada athletes and coaches carried out their sports duties across Italy on the sixth day of the Olympics, they were also confronted with tragedy back on their home soil.
Sam Reinhart, a forward on the Canadian men’s hockey team, said he was devastated to hear the news when he woke up Wednesday morning.
“We are all talking about it,” said Reinhart, who is from West Vancouver, B.C. “You feel it all the way over here. We’ve been thinking about them all day and we will continue to all Olympics. We are here to do what we can to represent the country and take some minds off it for an hour or two.”
‘It’s just horrible’: Tumbler Ridge reeling after deadly school shooting
A total of nine people are dead after Tuesday’s shootings at a high school and residence in the tiny community in B.C.’s Peace region, including the lone suspect whom police say died at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School by suicide.
The RCMP initially said 10 people had died in the shooting, including the shooter, but on Wednesday they revised the death toll to nine.
Jon Cooper, the head coach of the men’s hockey team, grew up about four hours away in Prince George, B.C.
In Milan on Wednesday, he said it was hard to get his head around what happened.
“You think about tragedies that happen, usually they happen somewhere else, so you never really feel the effect of it touching close to home,” Cooper said. “This one’s close to home, and my heart goes out to all the families.”
Doug Armstrong, general manager of the men’s hockey team, offered his sympathies.
“All we can do is send our love, send our support and then go out and do our jobs,” he said.
In Cortina D’Ampezzo, Heather Nedohin, coach of the Canadian women’s curling team, said she was raised about an hour away from Tumbler Ridge.
“It was close to my home,” said Nedohin, who grew up in Fort St. John, B.C., but now lives in Sherwood Park, Alta. “So I can only imagine the heartfelt, broken hearts with what’s going on. The complete details, I’ll be honest, no, we don’t know. But it’s a tragedy. I can’t imagine what everyone’s feeling across Canada.”
The Canadian women’s curling team heard about the news on Wednesday as they were preparing for their first practice on the Olympic ice in Cortina.
Nedohin learned to curl in Fort St. John, where her father and other relatives still live.
“The sense of the community around there, I’m going to probably know somebody,” said Nedohin, anticipating she would be hearing from family and friends back home soon.
Jessica Linton, from Vancouver, competed Wednesday in women’s moguls, placing 19th out of 20th in the first round.
“My heart goes out to all the families,” the 24-year-old said. “We stand as a country together and we’ll get through this.”
With a report from Eric Reguly
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