Canada college gun rampage: Two dead, 19 hurt

A terrifying attack in a Canadian college has left one woman and the gunman dead and at least 19 others injured.

People tried desperately to hide from the young man in a black trench coat with a Mohican haircut who opened fire at the Montréal college before police shot and killed him, witnesses said.

Scores of panicked students at Dawson College fled into the streets of Canada’s second-largest city after the shooting began at around lunchtime yesterday. Some had clothes stained with blood.

Others cried and clung to each other.

Two nearby shopping centres and a daycare centre also were evacuated and the subway service was disrupted.

“I was terrified. The guy was shooting at people randomly. He didn’t care. He was just shooting at everybody,” said student Devansh Smri Vastava. “There were cops firing. It was so crazy.”

Witnesses said the attacker started firing outside the college before walking in the front door. Much of the shooting was in the second-floor cafeteria, where students dropped to the floor and lay in terror.

At times the gunman hid behind vending machines before emerging to take aim, at one point at a teenager who tried to take a photograph of the offender with his mobile phone. Teachers ran through the halls, telling everyone to get out of the building.

Police rushed to the scene, hiding behind a wall as they exchanged fire with the gunman, whose back was against a vending machine, said student Andrea Barone, who was in the cafeteria.

Officers proceeded cautiously because many students were trapped around the assailant, who yelled: “Get back!” every time an officer tried to move closer.

The gunman reportedly then came under a hail of gunfire.

Authorities did not provide any information about the attacker. 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”.

Police with guns drawn stood behind a police cruiser as a SWAT team swarmed the 12-acre campus. The attacker’s bloody body, covered in a yellow sheet, lay near an entrance to a school building.

Montréal General Hospital said 11 people were admitted, including eight who were in critical condition. The others were taken to two other hospitals. One young woman later died, a police official said.

“Today we have witnessed a cowardly and senseless act of violence unfold at Montréal’s Dawson College,” Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper said.

“Our primary concern right now is to ensure the safety and recovery of all those who were injured during this tragedy.”

The shooting recalled the 1999 attack at Columbine High School in Colorado, where two students wearing trench coats killed 13 people before killing themselves.

Witnesses to yesterday’s attack said a man wearing a black trench coat entered the school cafeteria and opened fire without uttering a word.

Derick Osei, 19, said he was walking down the stairs to the 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.”

Mr 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 a TV channel. “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!'" Mr 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 everyone start to run.

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

Mr Barone said a police officer emerged from a corner next to the cafeteria and fired a shot in the direction of the gunman no more than several yards away and missed him.

Five or six more police officers showed up, he said. Mr Barone said it was like a running battle with five or six shots fired in both directions every minute.

After police eventually killed the gunman, the officers helped the students leave the cafeteria, crawling out on their bellies along a wall.

Mr Barone said as they were crawling towards an exit they saw a girl who had been shot in the torso and who was face down surrounded by a pool of blood.

He said officers told them: “Don’t look. Don’t look. Keep going out.”

Canada’s worst mass shooting also happened in Montréal. Gunman Marc Lepine killed 14 women at the École Polytechnic on December 6, 1989, before shooting himself.

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

That shooting spurred efforts for new 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 Mr Lepine’s victims.

Dawson is more of a pre-college division than a traditional university. It was the first English-language institution in Québec’s network of university preparatory colleges when it was founded in 1969.

With about 10,000 students, it is the largest college of general and vocational education, known by its French acronym CEGEP, in the province.