Gunman Wounds 20 at Montreal College

AP ^ | Sep 13 5:33 PM US/Eastern | PHIL COUVRETTE

[BenLurkin]

MONTREAL A gunman in a black trench coat and sporting a mohawk haircut opened fire Wednesday at a Montreal college and wounded at least 20 people _ six critically _ before he apparently was killed by police, witnesses and authorities said.

Scores of panicked students at Dawson College near downtown fled into the surrounding streets after the shooting broke out at the school of about 10,000. Some had clothes stained with blood.

Police spokesman Ean Lafreniere said there was just one gunman at the school and the search for any others was over.

Although police initially suggested the gunman had killed himself, Police Director Yvan DeLorme later said at a news conference that "based on current information, the suspect was killed by police."

CBC-TV showed police with guns drawn standing behind a police cruiser as a SWAT team swarmed the 12-acre campus. A bloody body covered in a yellow sheet lay next to a police cruiser near an entrance to a school building.

Montreal General Hospital said 11 people were admitted, including six who were in critical condition. The other nine were taken to two other hospitals.

Witnesses said a man wearing a black trench coat entered the school cafeteria and opened fire wordlessly.

Derick Osei, 19, said he was walking down the stairs to the second- floor cafeteria when he saw a man with a gun.

"He ... just started shooting up the place. I ran up to the third floor and I looked down and he was still shooting," Osei said. "He was hiding behind the vending machines and he came out with a gun and started pointing and pointed at me. So I ran up the stairs. I saw a girl get shot in the leg."

Osei said people in the cafeteria were all lying on the floor.

"I saw the gunman who was dressed in black and at that time he was shooting at people," student Michel Boyer told CTV. "I immediately hit the floor. It was probably one of the most frightening moments of my life."

"He was shooting randomly, I didn't know what he was shooting at, but everyone was screaming get out of the building," Boyer said. "Everybody was in tears. Everybody was so worried for their own safety for their own lives."

Raamias Hernandez, 19, said he had just finished his class when he saw everybody starting to run.

He said the gunman was dressed in a black jacket and had a mohawk haircut. Hernandez said he started to take pictures on a camera cell phone with his friend and the suspect saw them and started shooting.

Student Devansh Smri Vastava said he saw a man in military fatigues with "a big rifle" storm the cafeteria.

"He just started shooting at people," Vastava said, adding that he heard about 20 shots fired. He also said teachers ran through the halls telling students to get out.

"We all ran upstairs. There were cops firing. It was so crazy," Vastava said. "I was terrified. The guy was shooting at people randomly. He didn't care, he was just shooting at everybody. I just got out."

A SWAT team and canine units were dispatched to the school, going floor by floor to look for victims, Sgt. Giuseppe Boccardi told CNN.

People also were evacuated from two nearby shopping centers.

Canada's worst mass shooting also happened in Montreal. Gunman Marc Lepine killed 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnic on Dec. 6, 1989, before shooting himself.

The 25-year-old Lepine roamed the halls of the school firing a rifle, specifically targeting women whom he claimed in a suicide note had ruined his life. Nine other women and four men were wounded.

That shooting spurred efforts for tighter gun laws and greater awareness of societal violence _ particularly domestic abuse. Canada's tighter gun law was achieved mainly as the results of efforts by survivors and relatives of the victims.

Another shooting in Montreal occurred in 1992, when a Concordia University professor killed four colleagues.

Dawson College was the first English-language institution in Quebec's network of university preparatory colleges when it was founded in It is the largest college of general and vocational education, known by its French acronym CEGEP, in the province.

[hoosierham]

Facts never get in the way of modern liberal feelings.

[timsbella]

It's la Belle province. Why should today be different?

[fanfan]

Note: this article, like many in the msm up here, is opportunistically using this tragedy to give radical feminists & gun-banners a free soapbox long before the bodies are even cold; much less most of the facts are known/released.

They have to rationalize it all in their little minds somehow.

[glock rocks]

[Cindy]

What's a squeegee kid?

[timsbella]

A homeless punk who cleans car windows (with a squeegee) at stop lights for change. It's as awful as it sounds.

[Cindy]

Oh, ok...also found in New York, Oakland and Los Angeles.

Thank you.

[timsbella]

Spoke to a friend whose office is in Westmount Square. WS was in lockdown with only one exit for all offices and shops. He says no one knew what they were doing, how many shooters or how many victims and this was 90 minutes ago.

[Pharmboy]

Didn't they just screen that movie about the Bush "assassination" up in Canada? I wonder if the shooter was at the show...perhaps that inspired him. (The x42s tried to blame Rush for the OKC bombing...)

[conservative in nyc]

Oh, ok...also found in New York, Oakland and Los Angeles.

The squeegee folks were common in New York ten years ago, before Giuliani became mayor and the police started arresting them. They're pretty rare now - I can't remember the last time I saw one here. They simply aren't tolerated.

If this is still a problem in Montreal, maybe it's time for the liberals there to start cracking down instead of coddling them. Arresting petty criminals was an essential part of New York's crackdown on crime - and the crime rate fell precipitously in part because of it.

[Screamname]

Calling Michael Moore.

[US_MilitaryRules]

Is the NRA member card in your wallet?


YES!!!

[Axhandle]

"A gunman in a black trench coat and sporting a mohawk haircut..."

So it was Injuns, not Muslims. Time to bring back the cavalry of the days of yore.

[Fido969]

Low fatality rate might suggest full metal jacket bullets.

[RDTF]

video with a witness and police official here:

http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=686CFB7F-3F11-47D5-AC48-1A043808038E&f=00&fg=copy

[VOA]

Sounds like a younger version of the "squeegee guys" of New York City that
would do the squeegee thing to cars stuck at lights or in traffic.
I guess some were a bit abusive if they didn't get decent "contributions"
for their unrequested work.

IIRC, they were one of the first targets Rudy Giuliani zapped when he
became Mayor and went with the "broken windows" theory of improving a cityscape.
I.e., you take care of the little problems of urban decay...and you also
find out you can even attack some of the biggest problems.

[Milwaukee_Guy]

"Mass killing only happen when and where the victims are disarmed."

Columbine, Denver Post Office, Texas McDonald's, Illinois Navistar massacre and many other incidents took -hours- for the authorities to actually enter the building. Dozens of dead and injured and the vaunted SWAT teams surround the building and wait for the victims to bleed out and the perp to commit suicide.

It's happened too many times.

I hope the Canadians actually got to the perp but I am not optimistic.....

[Cindy]

"If this is still a problem in Montreal, maybe it's time for the liberals there to start cracking down instead of coddling them."

Good idea and thanks for your feedback.

[Cindy]

Thanks VOA.

Now I know, there are NO squeegee guys in New York and I stand corrected.

[GMMAC]

"... maybe it's time for the liberals there to start cracking down instead of coddling them"

Thanks.
... still cleaning the snorted rum & coke off my monitor screen.

Of course if you were talking about liberals getting tough with some real public menace like, say, homophobic chain-smoking Jesus-loving pit bulls well ...