Edmonton gunman Phu Lam spared the lives of two babies
Vietnamese killer dropped children at relatives before shooting final victim
A man who killed eight people in the Canadian city of Edmonton spared two babies who he dropped off with relatives before killing his last victim and turning the murder weapon on himself.
Police said Phu Lam, 53, shot his wife and eight-year-old son, as well as his sister-in-law, her daughter, and his wife's parents. The victims lived in the same residence in Edmonton.
Another male acquaintance was shot in that same home. Lam later shot Cyndi Nguyen, 37, in another part of the city before driving to a town 30km northeast of the city, where he shot himself in a Vietnamese restaurant.
Police have not yet identified the relationship between all the families.
Police said that Lam had dropped an eight-month-old girl, a niece of his wife Thuy Tien Truong, whom he had already killed, and their one-year-old son with a relative in Edmonton before shooting the eighth victim, Cyndi, later that day.
"There's a very good possibility that those children were in the house ... when the homicides took place," Edmonton Police Superintendent Mark Neufeld said. "And, yes, for whatever reason, the children were spared."
The murder-suicide made the mass killing the deadliest in the history of the city, which was incorporated in 1904. Edmonton, population 878,000, recorded 27 murders in 2013 and 27 last year prior to the killings.