A man with a black trench coat whose shooting rampage in a Montreal college killed one person and wounded 19 others before he was killed by police said on a website in his name that his favourite internet game was about the Columbine shootings.
People flee the scene of a school shooting at Dawson College in Montreal yesterday
The gunman who opened fire at Dawson College yesterday was Kimveer Gill (25) of Laval, near Montreal, a police official said today.
Six victims remained in critical condition, including two in extremely critical condition.
The official said police had searched Gill's home. In postings on a website called VampireFreaks.com, blogs in Gill's name show more than 50 photos depicting the young man in various poses holding a rifle and donning a long black trench coat and combat boots.
One photo has a tombstone with his name printed on it — below it the phrase: "Lived fast died young. Left a mangled corpse."
The last of six journal entries yesterday was posted at 10.41am (local time) yesterday, about two hours before the gunmen was shot to death after the college shooting.
He said on the site that he liked to play Super Columbine Massacre, an internet-based computer game that simulated the 1999 shootings at the Colorado high school where two students wearing trench coats killed 13 people before committing suicide.
Montreal Police Chief Yvan Delorme said the lessons learned from other mass shootings had taught police to try to stop such assaults as quickly as possible.
"Before our technique was to establish a perimeter around the place and wait for the SWAT team. Now the first police officers go right inside. The way they acted saved lives," he said.
Witnesses said Gill started shooting outside the college, then entered the second-floor cafeteria and opened fire without uttering a word. At times, he hid behind vending machines before emerging to take aim — at one point at a teenager who tried to photograph him with his cell phone.
Police dismissed suggestions that terrorism played a role in the lunch-hour attack. The gunman opened fire haphazardly at no target in particular, until he saw the police and took aim at them, Chief Delorme said.
Police hid 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.
He said the officers proceeded cautiously because many students were trapped around the assailant, who yelled "Get back! Get back!" every time an officer tried to move closer.
Eventually, Barone said, the gunman went down in a hail of gunfire. Chief Delorme said some officers were at the school on an unrelated matter when the shooting erupted.