MONTREAL, Quebec (CNN) — A gunman was killed by police and 20 students were wounded after a Wednesday shooting at Dawson College in downtown Montreal, police said.
Initial reports indicated that as many as four people, including two gunmen, had been killed, but Yvan Delorme, chief of Montreal Police Services, said only the single gunman was killed. Police were looking for other possible suspects, he said. Delorme would not comment on a motive, but said the shootings were not hate crimes or terror-related.
Three of the critically wounded were in operating rooms Wednesday afternoon, and three others were awaiting operations, a Montreal General Hospital spokeswoman said. Two other critically wounded victims were in the emergency room, she said. All surgeries should be completed by Wednesday evening, she said.
The spokeswoman said at least 14 victims had been brought to area hospitals. Eleven patients were transported to Montreal General and four or five more had been taken to two other area hospitals to ease the burden on Montreal General, she said.
Among the wounds being treated were gunshots to the head, abdomen, chest, arms and legs, she said. Police cordoned off the 12-acre campus after the incident and searched a nearby shopping mall for suspects, a police spokesman said. A SWAT team was in the college because "we believe there might be other suspects inside the Dawson College," a Montreal police spokesman told reporters.
Police were using search dogs in a door-to-door search for the gunman or gunmen Wednesday afternoon, another spokesman said. The shots were randomly fired in the cafeteria and atrium, and students said they didn't think anyone was targeted, said reporter Genevieve Beauchemin with the television station CFCF.
Students told Beauchemin that at least one of the gunmen was dressed in black. A student told Global News in Montreal that one of the shooters was in his early 20s and was wearing a trench coat. "He was saying nothing, just shooting. He told people to get away, and that was it," the student said.
Another student, Daniel Mightley, 21, said the shooting began outside the college. Mightley said he was heading to lunch when he saw one of the shooters to his right. The gunman, who was wearing a black trench coat and had a mohawk, fired a shot and "everybody just ran inside," he said."I saw his face and he had no emotion in his face whatsoever," Mightley said. "He was walking very slowly toward us and just shooting."Mightley said he saw at least one person get shot.
Police had not yet determined how many people were shot, said Sgt. Giuseppe Boccardi."My understanding, at this moment, is that most of the students have exited the college grounds," Boccardi said.
Video showed students streaming from the campus after the midday shootings."People were literally running for their lives," said Beauchemin, describing what the students told her was a "stampede." Emergency personnel and police, in bulletproof vests, wheeled people on two stretchers to ambulances. Boccardi said he couldn't provide a description of the victims.
A first-year student who didn't give her name said she saw one victim who had been shot in the leg being helped across the street, and another who had been shot in the stomach lying on the sidewalk."We were just sitting in class, and we were listening to the teacher and we heard guns going off," the student said. "We looked outside and everyone was screaming and crying and there were people that got shot that were running away."And then our teacher left, and he came back and said the gunmen were inside and we had to leave."
The college has 7,000 day students and 3,000 night students, according to the Dawson Web site. In Canada, students as young as 16 can attend colleges, which generally serve as bridges between high schools and universities.
This is not the first shooting at a Montreal college. About 17 years ago, Marc Lepine opened fire at Ecole Polytechnique. Fourteen female students were killed in the December 1989 shooting before Lepine killed himself. Lepine left behind a three-page letter blaming feminists for his not being able to get into the school.
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