Montreal gunman took his own life, police say

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Montreal gunman took his own life, police say


SCOTT DEVEAU
Globe and Mail Update

Quebec police have confirmed that 25-year-old Kimveer Gill was the shooter during a rampage Wednesday at downtown Montreal's Dawson College. Quebec provincial police now say autopsy results show that Mr. Gill died after shooting himself in the head.
Spokesman Jayson Gauthier says police shot Gill in the arm before he turned his own weapon on himself and fired a bullet into his head.
Earlier, police said Mr. Gill was shot and killed by police following the incident.
Mr. Gill lived with his mother in Laval, north of Montreal, loved guns and violent video games, and threatened violence against others on his website.

One of his victims, an 18-year-old woman, died at the scene. She was identified by family members as Anastasia DeSousa of Montreal. "She was full of life, she was the perfect little niece," her uncle, Réal Hevy, told the Montreal Gazette.
Shooting victims were ferried to three hospitals, the most seriously injured to the trauma unit of the nearby Montreal General Hospital, and others to the Jewish General and Jean-Talon Hospital.
Montreal General Hospital officials said Thursday afternoon that three of the eleven patients originally brought to the hospital have been discharged. Two patients, who were originally taken to the intensive care unit, have had their condition stabilized.
However, four remain on life support in intensive care at the hospital, and one is much worse shape than the others. He said one is in a deep coma, and the others are sedated.
"When they remain in intensive care, it means they're critical. We're always afraid for their lives," trauma director Dr. Tarek Razek. Thursday afternoon. "Over the next 24 to 48 hours, well, it's an on hour-by-hour basis."
Mr. Gill's Web page, which was taken down by early Thursday morning, included a photo of a tombstone with his first name printed on it with an epitaph that read: "Lived fast died young. Left a mangled corpse."
The last entry on his blog was posted a 10:41 a.m. Wednesday, just hours before the rampage at Dawson College.
"Whiskey in the morning, mmmmmm, mmmmmmmmm, good !! :)," he wrote.
The site also contained 55 pictures of Mr. Gill, several of them with him holding knives and guns, wearing a black trench coat and combat boots, which witnesses said he was wearing at the time of the attacks.
"I think I have an obbsetion [sic] with guns ... muhahaha," he wrote in an inscription below a picture of himself aiming the barrel of the gun at the camera.
Mr. Gill also gives some insight into what sort of person he may have been.
"He has met a handfull [sic] of people in his life who are decent. But he finds the vast majority to be worthless."
He said he dislikes: "The world and everything in it."
He also says: "Life is like a video game, you gotta die sometime."
One of his favourite video games was called "Super Columbine Massacre." Columbine is the high school in Colorado where on April 20, 1999, two teenagers clad in black trench coats, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed 12 fellow high-school students and a teacher and wounded 24 others before committing suicide.
He also complained that another shooting game, Postal 2, was "too childish." The purpose of the game is to get through as much of the game as possible without going berserk and gunning people down, or, failing that, to avoid getting caught and being thrown in jail.
"i want them to make a game so realistic, that it looks and feels like it's actually happening," he wrote in his blog.
The blog was posted on the now infamous VampireFreaks.com, which has figured prominently in at least two high-profile killings in Canada in the past few years.
A 12-year-old and her 23-year-old boyfriend met on the site before being charged with murder in the deaths of an Alberta family in April.
In February, 2005, a judge declared a mistrial in the Johnathan murder trial, in which a three young men were charged in the slaying of the 12-year-old boy, after it was discovered that a key 15-year old witness may have perjured herself after her blog on VampireFreaks.com contradicted some of her testimony.
The site's administrators posted a response referring to the incident in Montreal as a tragedy, but said that Mr. Gill was a "bad seed," and that VampireFreaks.com had been unfairly implicated in the shootings.
"Just because someone goes around shooting people and happens to be a member of vampirefreaks, doesn't mean that this website has influenced him to do such a horrible thing," the administrators wrote on the site Thursday.
The Sûreté du Québec said the guns found at the scene were legally registered and that they do in fact have units that try to monitor as many of these sites as possible.
"The difficulty is that there are million of sites," said Const. Jayson Gauthier, spokesman for the Sûreté du Québec. He added that the internet team looked over the site this morning before it was taken down.
"An initial preliminary look at his site didn't reveal to us that there was any information that he could have been a threat to society. There is no indication whatsoever that he could have done something like this. The guns are registered, but the site doesn't tell us that he's going to do anything."
As horrific as it was, the attack could have been much worse. Police arrived on site within three minutes of the gunman's opening fire and, in their words, "neutralized" the shooter a short time later.
Montreal Police Chief Yvan Delorme said the motive for the attack was unclear, but he dismissed suggestions that women or members of specific ethnic or religious groups were being targeted.
"There is no racist connotation whatsoever, this is not related ... to terrorism. We have no information linking these events to anything other than what occurred on site," he said.
Nonetheless, the crime had immediate and broad repercussions, from pandemonium in a huge chunk of downtown Montreal to reigniting the heated gun-control debate.
The shootings also sparked intense emotion from traumatized students, anxious parents and the highest offices of the nation.
La Presse reporters who went to Mr. Gill's house said they were met by his father, who refused comment. The Quebec provincial police confirmed o the newspaper, , however, that they questioned his family.
The killer parked his Pontiac Sunfire on a downtown street, pulled the weapons from the trunk and walked toward the entrance of Dawson College.
The first of more than 400 calls to 9-1-1 came at 12:41 p.m., shortly after the shooting started outside the college. The gunman proceeded into the school cafeteria and other common areas. He apparently said little, simply shooting victims at random, using a single semi-automatic rifle. Witnesses said dozens of shots were fired in the short time before police arrived.
Shortly after the rampage began, the gunman was killed by police during an intense gun battle inside the school. (Because the man died at the hands of Montreal police, the death is now being investigated by the provincial Sûreté du Québec).
The incident was, for all intents and purposes, over by 1:10 p.m.
Dawson College, which has 10,000 students, is an English-language CEGEP. Students who attend junior colleges in Quebec are usually aged 16 to 19, though Dawson also has a large number of mature students.
Montreal has been the scene of two previous rampages.
On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lépine murdered 14 women at École Polytechnique, a crime driven by his hatred of women.
And on Aug. 24, 1992, disgruntled Concordia University professor Valery Fabrikant murdered four colleagues.
The motive for the shooting at Dawson College remains unclear.
Concordia University, which is located nearby, sent shuttle buses to help remove Dawson students and offered counselling services. École Polytechnique sent out a "message of solidarity."


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