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 Police said a suspect was arrested after the shooting in La Loche,
Saskatchewan, an impoverished community about 600 km (375 miles)
north of the city of Saskatoon.
The town's acting mayor, Kevin Janvier, told the Associated Press
that his 23-year-old daughter Marie, a teacher, was shot to death.
He also said police told him that the gunman first shot two of his
siblings at home and then made his way to the school.
Officials have not given a motivation for the shooting or named the
suspect or victims.
Mass shootings are rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than
the United States. In the country's worst school shooting, 14
college students were killed at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique in
1989. A shooting in 1992 at Concordia University in Montreal killed
four.
A family friend said the teenaged suspect shot his two younger
brothers before going to the school and shooting a teacher and an
assistant.
“After he shot his two brothers, he walked back to school and he
shot ... a teacher and a girl. They’re both dead. Four of them
died,” said Joe Lemaigre, a family friend who lives on the outskirts
of La Loche. “I know the family. Their mother worked in Fort
McMurray and his grandfather went to Meadow Lake to do some
shopping. That's when he shot them."
 The shooting occurred in the high school and a second location,
Canadian police said, adding they took the suspect into custody
outside the school and seized a gun.
Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian
Nations, which represents more than 70 of the province's Indian
bands, said a few students were in surgery Friday evening in
Saskatoon, the province's largest city.
"Everyone is still in shock and disbelief," Cameron said. "It's a
very, very horribly tragic event."
La Loche student Noel Desjarlais told the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation that he heard multiple shots fired at the school, which
has about 900 students.
"I ran outside the school," Desjarlais said. "There was lots of
screaming, there was about six, seven shots before I got outside. I
believe there was more shots by the time I did get out."
A cellphone video taken by one resident and broadcast by the CBC
showed students walking away from the school across the snow-covered
ground and emergency personnel moving in.
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"Obviously this is every parent's worst nightmare," said Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau, who initially reported five people were
killed. He was in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic
Forum.
Among Canada’s provinces, Saskatchewan had the highest rate of
police-reported family violence in 2014, double the national rate of
243 incidents per 100,000 people, according to a Statistics Canada
report on Thursday.
Extra doctors and nurses were sent to treat patients in Keewatin
Yatthe Regional Health Authority's 16-bed hospital, said spokesman
Dale West. He declined to say how many people had been injured.
“It’s really sad in La Loche today, very depressing,” said Tenisha
Lemaigre, who lives in the town of less than 3,000 people and said
she knew many students.
Unemployment runs above 20 percent in the area but three-quarters of
working-age people are classified as retired or not looking for
work, according to 2011 government figures. Residents say the real
unemployment rate is above 50 percent.
In 2014, a teacher expressed concern about violence at the La Loche
school, noting that a student who had tried to stab her was put back
in her classroom after serving his sentence, and another attacked
her at her home.
"That student got 10 months," Janice Wilson told the CBC of the
student who tried to stab her in class. "And when he was released he
was returned to the school and was put in my classroom."
(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Julie Gordon in
Vancouver; Additional reporting by Susan Taylor and Jeffrey Hodgson
in Toronto and Martinne Geller in Davos, Switzerland; Writing by
Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Grant McCool and David Gregorio)
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