Residents of Tumbler Ridge, the small northeastern B.C. town where police say a shooter killed six children and two adults on Tuesday, have yet to fully process the mass shooting but continue to lean on each other, the community’s MLA says. “The only reasonable description I can give you is numb,” Larry Neufeld, B.C. MLA for Peace River South, told CTV’s Your Morning on Thursday when asked how the grieving community was feeling. “People are not processing it yet; I’m not properly processing it. I wasn’t here when it happened, but I am a member of the community and (we’re all) numb, I don’t have a better word for you.” Neufeld, whose constituency office is located in nearby Dawson Creek, B.C., said one of his main priorities in the shooting’s aftermath was to ensure that everyone in the community had access to the necessary supports. He said he was initially concerned that the wider government response may not be sufficient, but he’s been pleased by the attention and care that’s been extended to the community so far. “I made very many phone calls throughout the evening, and ministers were answering their phone at two in the morning and at five in the morning. Everything that I asked for was provided and more,” said Neufeld. Mental health and crisis management services were Neufeld’s main requests, “and they are here, they are here in strength,” he said. A vigil was held Wednesday night in Tumbler Ridge in memory of the victims. Neufeld said the closeness of the town’s roughly 2,400 residents was on full display and added that the community support networks entrenched in such a tight-knit community are hard to describe. “(It’s) something that you have to experience to understand; I have experienced it, it’s incredible. The people of this community are amazing and that is a very large part of what was talked about last night at the vigil,” he said. “(It was) neighbours relying on neighbours, relying on community networks, relying on friendships and that’s what I’m here to be a part of. We need peace, we need time to grieve, and we need an opportunity for the healing to begin.” Next steps in the investigation As the investigation into the incident continues, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in B.C. have released more details about the shooter and the victims involved in one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history. Police said Wednesday that the suspect, identified as 18-year-old Tumbler Ridge resident Jesse Van Rootselaar, was known to police and had a history of mental health concerns. However, the motive for the shooting has yet to be determined. “We know everything but the why,” former Toronto homicide detective Mark Mendelson told CTV’s Your Morning on Thursday. According to police, Van Rootselaar, who was born biologically male but identified as female in public and on social media, shot and killed her mother and sibling at a residence before attending Tumbler Ridge Secondary School where she fatally shot six others, then herself. “What the police are doing is, of course, they’re interviewing everybody at the school, because there are witnesses who actually saw what happened,” said Mendelson. “They’re going to try and determine whether these victims were targeted or whether the shooter came in and just randomly opened fire indiscriminately.” To determine if the six victims shot at the school were targeted, Mendelson said the RCMP will be looking at producing multiple search warrants and production orders “related to both the shooter and the family.” “Were they on any blogs, any social media sites, were they being goaded into doing this action? That’s not unheard of, there’s people all over the world that encourage people to go out and do these things,” he said. Another important aspect of the investigation is the weapons used in the shooting, Mendelson noted. Police said Wednesday that Van Rootselaar had once possessed a firearms licence, but it had expired, and the suspect did not have any registered guns at the time of the shooting. However, RCMP said firearms, registered to someone in the suspect’s household, had been confiscated from the home in the past, but the owner of the firearms lobbied police to have them returned, which they eventually were. Police did not say if they were the same weapons used in Tuesday’s shooting. “Why were those guns returned is also a question that was brought up yesterday by the RCMP,” Mendelson said. “Who was the lawful owner at the time, was it the mother or was it somebody else in the house, and what efforts and what explanations were given to get those guns back?”
