As gun blasts thundered through the halls of the La Loche Community School last Friday, students and staff dove for cover — in classrooms, washrooms, offices and closets.
Douglas Quan, The National Post
, Last Updated: 9:08 AM ET
As gun blasts thundered through the halls of the La Loche Community School last Friday, students and staff dove for cover — in classrooms, washrooms, offices and closets.
Others just froze.
“I didn’t know where to go, I felt so lost,” student Cayleen Jayden Park later recalled.
Staring down the barrel of a shotgun in the commons area, a school employee waited for the gunman to fire, thinking she could “outrace” the bullet.
She was wrong.
Shotgun pellets reportedly pierced her arm and stomach.
Amid screams of fleeing students, the suspect, described by his peers as “quiet and kind,” allegedly dared some people to tease him, while bypassing those who had been nice to him.
“No man, not you, bro,” the lanky teen is reported to have said.
Meanwhile, two girls, both bleeding from gunshot wounds, darted out the school doors and hid behind a tree.
The rampage, which left several dead or wounded, was over in minutes.
In its wake, though, the 3,000 residents of the remote northwestern Saskatchewan community of La Loche, mostly aboriginals, have been faced with a dizzying swirl of emotions.
There has been grief, shock and heartbreak, for sure.
But also resolve.
Resolve not to cast blame on the suspect, who cannot be named because he is a young offender, or his family.
Resolve to get out the message that La Loche and the neighbouring Clearwater River Dene First Nation desperately need more housing, access to proper mental health facilities and after-school programs.
And resolve not to let this community be defined by tragedy.
“We will come back from this — and become stronger,” said Gerry Ross, manager of the local hardware store.
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La Loche sits at the end of Hwy. 155, about 600 kilometres north of Saskatoon, in the heart of the boreal forest and on the edge of the Canadian Shield.
Many from the area’s thriving Dene population work in mining or firefighting. And the lakeside village is popular with fishers, trappers and quad-riders.
There are a few shops in the village, a pharmacy and a small hospital. But entertainment venues are limited to a couple of bars and a hockey arena. There are no restaurants, motels or movie theatres. The closest Tim Hortons is 100 km away.
That relative quiet ended last Friday about lunchtime, when two brothers — Dayne Fontaine, 17, and Drayden Fontaine, 13 — both popular and into hunting and quadding, were gunned down inside their house.
The suspect then allegedly went to the high school, where the first semester was winding down and exams were getting underway.
The high school is modern and well-equipped, but prone to difficulties, which principal Stephen King has not shied away from discussing.
In a 2009 blog post, he wrote that while younger students were eager to learn, some high school students seemed disconnected, challenged authority and displayed little interest in attending classes.
“It is too simplistic to just blame it on adolescence because there are teens who remain focused and who do want to pursue a good education,” he wrote. “I wonder what kills the dreams of childhood of those who get lost on the journey? I wonder how do we rebuild those dreams?”
The 17-year-old shooting suspect is said to have suffered in his own way; he was bullied relentlessly and teased about his large ears.
Despite the ribbing, he was not known to lash out, says Perry Herman, who knew the shooter and the two Fontaine brothers. “He just bottled it up.”
At least for a while. At some point between the Fontaines' house and the school, the suspect allegedly sent a message to a chat group.
“im done with life,” it read.
“Why,” his friend Darius Piche replied.
“just killed 2 ppl. bout to shoot ip the school.”
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Piche later told the CBC and APTN that he walked up to the suspect at school and asked him what was wrong.
The suspect said nothing and walked a short distance to a car. Piche followed, and saw him pull out a shotgun from the backseat.
“I ran back inside and told everyone to run,” Piche said.
The hallways echoed with the sound of gunfire.
Some students thought they’d heard lockers slamming, or a fight – until a teacher yelled, “Shooter in the school!”
Alex Janvier, 15, scrambled for cover in a classroom.
Noel Desjarlais-Thomas, 16, said friends ran past him, urging him to get out.
The school employee, who cannot be identified because of a court order, had been greeting students in the commons area as the lunch hour was winding down when she saw a male student go down.
“I didn’t think the gun was real until I saw the spark of it firing, and then it was, ‘Oh my God, this is real. It’s not TV, that’s a real gun,’” she told a TC Media reporter in Nova Scotia.
“Then it was, ‘What do I do?’ You don't go to university to study this.”
A thought raced through her mind as she stared at the gunman: “ ‘Go ahead, shoot.’ Because I’m going to outrace that bullet. You’re going to shoot straight and I’m going to go left or right.’”
Almost. The gunman fired and she felt a burning sensation rip through her arm.
Not far away, Cayleen Jayden Park, snapped out of her paralysis.
“I saw (the employee’s) terrified face trying to protect the students and that's when I ran."
She and another student hid behind a door. Someone else was hiding underneath a desk.
“I started texting my mom right away,” Park said. “I just told her I loved her because I didn’t think I’d make it out.”
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David Ruelling said his niece was in a classroom when the gunman fired a shot through the door, showering her with slivers of glass. She and several other students scurried into a closet.
Meanwhile, his nephew was in another class. He heard two shots from the hallway. Someone ran into the classroom, shut the door and cut the lights.
Not long afterward someone else, presumably the gunman, tried to open the door, but it was locked. Whoever it was moved on. Three more shots rang out.
One woman, who asked not to be identified, said her niece and nephew texted her about the same time to say there was a shooter in the school.
“That’s how I knew they weren’t kidding around and lying.”
Hide, she instructed them.
Leonard Montgrand, executive director of the La Loche Friendship Centre, said his son was in the school’s washroom when the chaos erupted. For a moment, he considered staying put, but then decided to bolt and dashed to his father’s office less than half a kilometre away.
For relatives living outside the region, all they could do was wait.
Brock Hevenor, who had just started teaching at the school in September, texted his parents in North Bay, Ont., during the lockdown and said two people had been killed.
“I felt so helpless being so far away,” his mother, Shannon Leblanc, told the North Bay Nugget. “I just wanted to hear his voice.”
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Frantic calls bombarded the RCMP detachment in La Loche just after 1 p.m.
One officer arrived at the school, followed by two more. Further backup arrived a short time later.
The front doors were pockmarked with bullet holes.
Shortly after entering the school, an officer spotted the gunman and chased after him.
At about 1:15 p.m., Mounties took the suspect into custody at gunpoint.
No one else was hurt. But police found nine gunshot victims.
A teaching assistant, Marie Janvier, 21, died at the scene.
Adam Wood, who had just started teaching at the school in September, died in hospital.
One local woman, who happened to have an appointment at the La Loche Health Centre and Hospital, watched in horror as victim after victim was brought in.
One of them turned out to be a relative.
She had been shot, wounded in her back and leg, but she and a friend had fled the school and hid behind a tree in the snow before running for the hospital.
“She was in shock. She kept repeatedly telling her story of what happened. Then she’d be calm, then she’d be crying."
Four of the most seriously injured victims were flown to Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon.
Meanwhile, at the school, the remaining 150 or so staff and students were taken by bus to a community hall where they were reunited with loved ones.
“When those folks got off the bus and I’d seen the fear in their eyes, and the tears, and utter disbelief, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this can’t be happening,’” Montgrand recalled later.
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Since then, there have been numerous candlelight vigils and prayer circles. Thousands of dollars have been raised for victims’ families.
Alicia Fontaine, mother of Drayden and Dayne Fontaine, wrote on Facebook that her heart had been “shattered into a million pieces.”
“So sad I don’t have no more babies.”
The boys’ grandfather, Norman Fontaine, said he had lost his “best friends.”
Former co-workers at Roots to Harvest, a non-profit in Ontario that educates children about food cultivation, remembered Wood as someone who wanted to make a difference. “He truly saw himself as able to make positive change in the world,” the organization wrote on Facebook.
Teaching assistant Marie Janvier was similarly remembered for a kind and generous spirit. “I grew up not a good guy, but she turned me right,” her boyfriend, Deegan Park, said.
Even the suspect — now charged with four counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder — has been described by community members as a polite kid from a good family.
The grandmother of the dead brothers implored the community to forgive him.
“Please, you people of La Loche,” she told the CBC. “Please forgive him for what he did.”
“I myself forgive the shooter,” Cayleen Park said, even as she admitted she was afraid to go back to school.
Some people seemed equally concerned with what all this says about the town.
With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expected to visit on Friday, residents are growing wary of the media’s presence. Reporters only seem to take an interest in La Loche when something bad happens, they complain.
“People out there think our community is this evil, horrible place to live in. It’s not like that,” Montgrand told the Brent Loucks Show in Saskatoon.
Yes, addiction and suicide are problems, he said. But there are a lot of good things happening, too, such as the building of a new friendship centre.
With this shooting, “it seems all for naught. It’s like somebody punches you in the stomach.”
Hopefully, the tragedy will draw attention to the need for more resources and infrastructure, residents said.
While some have floated the idea of tearing down the school, others say money would be better spent on more housing, greater mental health services and family counselling.
At best, the community is currently served by a “temporary social service Band-Aid,” said Ruelling, a Grade 3 teacher at the nearby Clearwater River Dene Nation school.
Even in their grief, Adam Wood’s family called on the country to acknowledge the social conditions that led to last week’s shooting. The community knows what type of support it needs, they said in a statement.
“Rather than looking for someone to blame, or coming up with outsider opinions of reasons why this occurred, we must stop and listen to the voices of La Loche,” they said.
— With files from Saskatoon Star-Phoenix staff and The Canadian Press
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