Police charge 17-year-old boy in Canada after 4 shot dead

“This is every parent’s worst nightmare”, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum.

Police said Saturday the male suspect can’t be named under Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act.

At a news conference on Saturday, Grant St Germaine from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said the suspect would appear in court next week. The high school building, where two of the victims were killed on Friday, is modern, clean, well equipped and well-staffed.

The other victims were identified earlier as teaching assistant Marie Janvier and two brothers, Dayne Fontaine, 17, and Drayden Fontaine, 13. Maureen Levy said the gunman was arrested outside the school but declined to release details about him.

“I don’t what words there are, if they exist even, to possibly describe how you feel, how devastated the community is and how the province feels”, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall told a crowd gathered outside the local high school, the site of one of the shootings.

Police arrived at the school a short time after shots were fired and said the suspect “surrendered” and the firearm was seized. He was also charged with unauthorized possession of a firearm.

Still, indigenous communities will ask hard questions about gun security after the shooting, said Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations Chief Bobby Cameron, who represents more than 70 indigenous groups in the province. Numerous older generation were victims of the residential school system.

“It is important for people in that community to know that they are not alone, that this, this situation has touched, not just their community in such a devastating way, but the whole province, the whole country”, Goodale told CTV News.

“‘Run, bro, run!” Noel Desjarlais-Thomas, 16, recalled his friends saying to him as they fled La Loche’s junior and senior high school. “But am I a Canadian in a full sense?'” Coates said. “They have lost all ways, all mechanisms to cope, so you just drown your pain”. “And then I was hearing those shots, too, so of course I started running”.

Located deep in Canada’s northern boreal forest, 800 kilometres (500 miles) north of the provincial capital of Regina, La Loche has about 3,000 inhabitants.

“Everyone is still in shock and disbelief”, Cameron said.

The La Roche school has about 900 students between seventh and 12th grade. “I believe there were more shots by the time I did get out”.

RCMP received a call about the shooting around 1PM Friday.

“Our entire school and school division community are in shock and in mourning after the tragic events in La Loche”, the Northern Lights School Division posted on the Facebook page following Friday’s tragedy.

Gun violence is relatively rare in Canada, which has stricter gun laws than the United States.

The school district superintendent said it is unclear when students will be able to return to classes, and that grief counsellors and social workers were on hand to speak with anybody affected by the event.