Montreal – The gunman who opened fire at a downtown college in Montreal, killing one and wounding 19, was a 25-year-old man obsessed with guns, goth culture and violence, who proclaimed that “I hate the world,” according to Canadian media reports.
The man was identified by a police source and media reports as Kimveer Gill, who lived with his mother in Laval, north of Montreal.
Police did not officially identify the shooter, but they said Gill’s auto was left Wednesday after the lunchtime mayhem at the downtown campus of Dawson College, a college preparatory school with about 10,000 full- and part-time students. Police said they were awaiting autopsy results to confirm the gunman’s identity.
One student, Anastacia De Sousa, 18, was killed. Hospital officials said Thursday that eight people remain in intensive care, two of them in “extremely critical condition.”
The gunman, wearing a black trench coat and boots, killed himself after police, responding quickly to reports of the shooting, opened fire on him in the cafeteria. He was reportedly carrying a pistol, a 12-gauge shotgun and an automatic weapon.
On a website filled with obscenities and hatred for authority, Gill posted a log and about 50 pictures of himself, many of them posing with a semi-automatic rifle and wearing a long black trench coat and boots.
In rambling and angry Web log entries, using the identification fatality666, Gill raved about video games involving shooting and said, “I love guns….I really do. The great equalizer. … wouldn’t you say?”
His log entries often evoked scenes of random shootings. In one, predictive of the drizzly weather Wednesday when the shootings occurred, he wrote, “The disgusting human creatures scream in panic and run in all directions, taking with them the lies and deceptions.
“The Death Night gazes at the humans with an empty stare, as they knock each other down in a mad dash to safety. He wishes to slaughter them as they flee.”
In another, he said, “Usually I have dreams about people being murdered, hung, getting shot, and stuff like that.”
Witnesses said he had a Mohawk haircut. Some said he was in dressed in “goth-type” fashion and his skin was pierced with jewelry.
“I thought it was fireworks. And then the man came in the cafeteria. He pulled something out from under his coat, and it was a rifle,” said a 19-year-old student waiting Wednesday evening outside a hospital in Montreal.
Several witnesses said there were other gunmen, but police eventually concluded that the man had acted alone. Police on Wednesday declined to say what they believed prompted the shooting.
