Tumbler Ridge newspaper editor says many questions remain unanswered after deadly shootings

Nine people, including the suspect, were killed and at least 25 were injured in a mass shooting at  home and school in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. on Tuesday.

The suspect was found dead from a self-inflicted injury, and police said the motive of the shooter responsible for one of the deadliest school shootings in Canadian history may never be known.

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Trent Ernst, publisher and editor of Tumbler RidgeLines, a local newspaper, joined The Evan Bray Show to share what he knows about the shooting so far and how the community is coping in the aftermath.

Listen to the full interview with Ernst or read the transcript below:

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: Let’s start with how your community is doing this morning, not even 24 hours after this devastation played out yesterday.

TRENT ERNST: It’s hard to say. There’s different people who are acting, behaving differently. Let’s say that. There’s a lot of sympathy. There are rumours about the shooter and people are going off on that, which is unfortunate. I made a post on my Facebook page saying “Can we avoid the comments?” Apparently, there’s been a lot of highly politicized comments, and some comments there that I’ve got to go through and get rid of.

What questions do we still need answers for? What don’t we know this morning?

ERNST: The RCMP has not released anything about the shooter, their identity, as well as the victims. Some of the parents have come forward to speak to the town, but no names have been officially released.

That’s part of the challenge in a small community, because everyone knows everyone. So whether the RCMP are releasing this information or not, I’m guessing there’s a lot of knowledge just within the community.

ERNST: Yeah, I had people texting me the identity of the shooter within probably an hour or two of the actual event. I cannot confirm that was the shooter, so I am not going to go live with anything until that information is confirmed by the RCMP.

If we don’t know, factually, the identity of the shooter yet, the RCMP haven’t released it, does that mean we also don’t understand motive?

ERNST: Yeah. There’s a lot of people speculating about motives, and Facebook is a messy place right now.

Can you help us understand how Tumbler Ridge, as a community, will be able to handle this? There’s going to need to be all kinds of counselling and services provided. This is a fairly small community that you’re in, Trent.

ERNST: This time yesterday, the biggest news story was the fact that our clinic, which has basically has lost two doctors and Northern Health made the decision a few months ago to stop providing emergency services in town after five o’clock in the evening. So if there’s one – I can’t even call it a bright spot – but the fact that this happened while the clinic was open was something that’s a good thing, I guess is the best way to describe it. But the province has already got at least one psychiatric nurse in town. There are emergency services kind of pouring in. It’s going to be really hard to know what this does to the community. The town was built less than 50 years ago. There are still people who live here who have been here from when the town was built, so there’s this really strong sense of community in some corners. It’s also a mining community, and you’ve got people who fly in and fly out, so there’s this weird mix of a really tight-knit core and these people who kind of fly and fly out.

A lot of people don’t know much about Tumbler Ridge. We know it’s south of Dawson Creek in B.C., roughly 2,400 people is what we’re told in terms of population. Is it a mining town? Is that predominantly why that town exists in that location?

ERNST: Yeah, the town was built for the Northeast Coal Project back in the 80s. The two mines that were expanded at the time shut down in the early 2000s, and the town tried to do a lot of work to develop other industries. We’ve also got a lot of wind power here, but the mines have restarted and that’s sort of the big economic driver here.

When do we expect the next update from the RCMP? And what do you see as next steps as this tragedy continues to unfold?

ERNST: I haven’t heard anything about another press conference from the RCMP, but I have basically spent my morning talking to media from around the world, so I haven’t had as much time to pay attention to the actual reporting as I would like. A lot of people are hoping that sometime today the RCMP will put something out. But like I say, I haven’t had a message from them yet giving me a time. As far as the community goes, that’s hard. That’s really hard. This is something that’s exceptional, and in exceptional circumstances people do exceptional things, so there’s going to be a lot of people out there who are overflowing with kindness and love and support for their neighbours. But I suspect there’s also going to be people who will take this and make political hay from it. Even if it’s just something around gun violence, there are going to be people starting to yell at each other. On Facebook people are probably already starting to do that.

I know there were at least 25 other injuries, a couple of them deemed to be critical. People had to be airlifted out to emergency centres. Do we have an update on on their condition?

ERNST: No, last I heard an aunt of one of the victims had set up a GoFundMe for one of the kids that had been shot in the head and in the neck and last I heard was in surgery. I’m sure this information is flowing around out there, but I haven’t been given it.

Two were found deceased in a nearby home, and then a number that were killed or injured in the school. Were they targeted? Do we know that, Trent? Was this the shooter spraying bullets or targeted shots?

ERNST: I can probably say that the home where the two people were killed was targeted. That feels like it was definitely a target. I don’t know. There’s been no reports from inside this school if they were targeting anybody specifically, or if the goal was to just shoot as many people as possible.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct the number of victims, following a correction issued by the RCMP.