Tumbler Ridge grieves for 8 killed in Canada’s deadliest shooting in years
As a community mourns, details emerge of the 18-year-old shooter and a remote town left vulnerable by a lack of mental health services
The families of victims of a shooting in a remote Canadian Rockies town grappled with unrelenting grief on Thursday as details emerged about those killed in the country’s deadliest mass shooting in years.
Authorities said the 18-year-old alleged shooter, identified as Jesse Van Rootselaar, killed her 39-year-old mother, Jennifer Jacobs, and 11-year-old stepbrother, Emmett Jacobs, in their northern British Columbia home on Tuesday before heading to the nearby Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and opening fire, killing five children and an educator before killing herself.
Twenty-five people were also injured in the attack. The motive remains unclear.
Among the dead was 12-year-old Kylie Smith, whose family remembered her as “the light in our family”.
“She loved her family, friends, and going to school,” Kylie’s family said in a statement. “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.”
Kylie’s father tearfully recounted the desperate hours spent trying to learn what happened to his daughter, only to find out from an older girl, not the authorities.