Teen Fatally Shot at Canada High School
Pastor Dale Morgan
Teen Fatally Shot at Canada High School*
Thursday May 24, 2007 12:16 AM
By ROB GILLIES
Associated Press Writer
TORONTO (AP) - A 14-year-old student was shot and killed at a Toronto
high school Wednesday, forcing frightened teens to stay in their
locked-down classrooms for hours as police searched the building into
the evening.
Police said it was not a situation in which a gunman was roaming the
halls, but it was not known if the gunman was still in the school as the
search began. The students finally were released just before 6 p.m.,
more than three hours after the lockdown.
Police said there were no arrests and no weapon had been found in the
shooting at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute, which followed eight
school bomb scares last week in a country that prides itself on its low
crime rate.
Three high schools in the eastern province of Nova Scotia were evacuated
after reports of bomb threats. A 14-year-old in the eastern province of
New Brunswick was arrested after an explosive device was found in his
school, and six teens in Ontario were arrested for allegedly writing
bomb threats at a local elementary school.
``Students have a right to a safe school environment. It is shocking
that such a crime could take place in our schools,'' Toronto Police
Chief Bill Blair told a news conference Wednesday evening.
With students still locked down in their classrooms, Blair offered
assurances to worried parents, saying officers had secured the school
and were ``on every floor and in every room.''
After police received a call about a possible drowning at the school,
they arrived to find the 14-year-old in serious condition from a gunshot
wound. He later died at a hospital.
The Toronto Star reported that witnesses said there was a fight outside
the school, and then the shooter followed the victim inside and shot him.
The school is located near a poor area of Toronto noted for years for
its high crime rate.
Toronto Mayor David Miller said the incident highlights the need to
crack down on gun crimes in the city.
``Handguns have one purpose, and that is to kill, and it really
reinforces what we've been saying for quite a while at the city,''
Miller told TV station CP24. ``We absolutely have to get the guns off
the streets. It's going to require some changes to our laws, but it has
to be done.''
The shooting comes a little more than a month after a gunman killed 32
people on the campus of Virginia Tech, an American university, before
taking his own life.
In September, a gunman at Montreal's Dawson College killed a student and
wounded 19 others before he died from police gunfire.