Who Was The Tumbler Ridge Shooter? 10 Dead After Canada School Massacre

Police know who carried out Tuesday's massacre at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. They're just not saying.

Ten people are dead and 27 injured after an attack that tore through this remote British Columbia high school, leaving a tight-knit mountain community of 2,400 trying to make sense of the unspeakable. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have identified the person responsible but are refusing to release a name, citing privacy concerns and an active investigation.

That hasn't stopped family members from speaking out. Russell G. Strang told Juno News his nephew Jesse Strang, 18, was transgender and responsible for the shooting. A YouTube account believed to belong to Jesse displays the transgender flag and uses she/her pronouns. RCMP haven't confirmed any of this.

What they will say is that the suspect died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The violence began around 1.20 p.m. local time on 10 February when officers got reports of an active shooter inside the school. Six people lay dead inside the building by the time police cleared the scene. A seventh victim died whilst being rushed to the hospital. Officers later found two more bodies at a nearby house they believe is linked to the school attack, the RCMP said. The suspected shooter was found dead at the school.

The emergency alert wasn't cancelled until 5.45 p.m. Four and a half hours of terror in a place where everyone knows everyone.

The Tumbler Ridge Shooter And A Community In Shock

Tumbler Ridge sits in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, more than 1,100 kilometres northeast of Vancouver. It's the kind of place where 175 secondary school students feels normal, where the mayor can credibly claim to know every victim personally, Al Jazeera reported.

Darryl Krakowka broke down when he heard how many had died. 'It's devastating,' he said. 'I have lived here for 18 years. I probably know every one of the victims. I don't call them residents. I call them family.'

Darian Quist, a Year 12 pupil, spent more than two hours barricaded inside his classroom with other students after the lockdown alarm sounded. They stacked tables against the door and waited. His mother, Shelley, stayed on the phone with him the entire time, listening as her son and his classmates tried to stay quiet, tried to stay calm. She could hear the moment police finally arrived to escort them out, CBC reported.

'The reality of it all is starting to set in,' Quist told CBC afterwards. 'I believe I knew somebody, but everything is still very fresh.'

It's that last bit that sticks. In a school with roughly 20 students per year group, of course, he knew somebody. Everyone did.

Twenty-seven people were injured. Two victims were airlifted to the hospital with serious or life-threatening injuries. Another 25 got assessed and treated at the local medical centre. RCMP Northern District Commander Ken Floyd said investigators aren't yet in a position to understand what motivated the tragedy.

Police described the Tumbler Ridge shooter in a public alert as 'a female in a dress with brown hair' but have given no further details about age, weapons, or whether any of the dead were children.

Officers spent Tuesday evening searching other homes and properties to work out if additional sites were involved. The school district shut down all elementary and secondary schools for the rest of the week.

Trent Ernst, who publishes local news site Tumbler RidgeLines, was one of the first on the scene. He told CBC he initially wondered if it was another false alarm. 'These things occasionally happen, but I hopped in my car, grabbed my camera, went down there, and discovered all the roads to the school were blocked off.'

He later saw RCMP vehicles racing towards a home near the town centre, where the second shooting had taken place. That's when he knew it was real.

Canada's Deadliest School Shooting In Decades

This marks Canada's worst school attack in nearly 40 years. The last incident of this scale was the École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal on 6 December 1989, when a gunman murdered 14 women before killing himself, CNN reported. It's a comparison nobody in Tumbler Ridge wanted to be making.

British Columbia Premier David Eby called it an 'unimaginable tragedy'. Prime Minister Mark Carney scrapped his trip to a security conference in Munich to deal with the crisis, thanking first responders who risked their lives. World leaders piled in with statements. French President Emmanuel Macron said France 'stands alongside the Canadian people'. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the news has 'deeply shaken us'. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, whose country is still reeling from last December's Bondi Beach attack that killed 15, offered condolences.

Nicole Noksana, chair of the parent advisory council for both Tumbler Ridge schools, urged families to check in with their children. 'There are no words that can ease the fear and pain that events like this cause in a school community,' she wrote in a statement to CBC News.

The RCMP's Major Crimes Unit has taken over the investigation. Police haven't given any timeline for releasing more information about the victims or the suspected shooter. For now, Tumbler Ridge is left with grief, questions, and a hole in the community that won't heal quickly.