School Shooting
On September 13, 2006, a shooting occurred at Dawson College. Kimveer Gill, a 25 year-old resident of Laval, Quebec, entered the school armed with a variety of guns. Gill began firing on students outside of the entrance and again in the Atrium, before committing suicide after being shot by a police officer. Some witnesses reported to having seen a second gunman, a claim later proven incorrect by local police force. There was one other death, 18-year-old female student Anastasia Rebecca de Sousa, nineteen more were injured, eight critically.
Gill was dressed in a black trenchcoat, military clothes and combat boots, resulting in comparisons with Columbine High School killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. He was a member of gothmetal.net where he is seen holding guns and favored the video game depicting the Columbine High School shootings. A similar profile has been depicted on the website www.vampirefreaks.com, though it was taken down by the website administrators for unknown reasons. His profile name on that website was fatality666. Around 10:41 that morning, Gill made a final entry on the Vampirefreaks and listed his mood as "No mood." He wrote "Whiskey in the morning, mmmmmm, mmmmmmmmm, good!!"
The media developed a theory that Gill's motive was to copycat the Columbine shootings. Students said Gill was calm and shot randomly.
The college was closed until Friday, September 15, when teachers and support staff returned. Students were given access to the campus again on Monday, September 18, and classes resumed the following day, on Tuesday, September 19.
Other schools in Canada, including the four universities in Montreal, provided grief counseling for their students. Some had also put up special messages regarding this incident.
Read more about this topic: Dawson College
Famous quotes containing the words school and/or shooting:
“The first rule of education for me was discipline. Discipline is the keynote to learning. Discipline has been the great factor in my life. I discipline myself to do everything—getting up in the morning, walking, dancing, exercise. If you won’t have discipline, you won’t have a nation. We can’t have permissiveness. When someone comes in and says, “Oh, your room is so quiet,” I know I’ve been successful.”
—Rose Hoffman, U.S. public school third-grade teacher. As quoted in Working, book 8, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“... though it is by no means requisite that the American women should emulate the men in the pursuit of the whale, the felling of the forest, or the shooting of wild turkeys, they might, with advantage, be taught in early youth to excel in the race, to hit a mark, to swim, and in short to use every exercise which could impart vigor to their frames and independence to their minds.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)