Canadian police were searching for a motive Wednesday for one of the country’s deadliest mass shootings, while crucial questions remained unanswered about what unfolded a day earlier in the small, close-knit community of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Tuesday afternoon that 10 bodies had been recovered: those of six victims and the shooter at the local secondary school, a person who died while being transported from the school to a hospital, and two others at a private residence.

Prime Minister Mark Carney made a tearful statement to journalists arriving at Parliament in Ottawa on Wednesday.

“This morning, parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers in Tumbler Ridge will wake up without someone they love. The nation mourns with you. Canada stands by you,” he said, stopping to hold back tears and steady his voice. He said flags at Parliament and at government buildings around the country would fly at half-staff for the next seven days.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the suspect died of a self-inflicted wound but did not release a name. An early alert issued by police had described the person believed to be behind the attack as a “female in a dress with brown hair,” but they have not since provided any more information on the person’s identity.

“We believe we’ve been able to identify the shooter, but for privacy reasons and obviously for the conduct of the investigation, we’re not releasing that information” yet, Superintendent Ken Floyd of the RCMP said in a video news conference Tuesday.

In addition, he said, “we are not in a place now to be able to understand why and what may have motivated this tragedy.”

The scale of the shooting is devastating for the remote town of just 2,400 people, on the eastern flank of the Rockies, where few people are strangers. Tumbler Ridge boomed and then declined in the last century along with the local coal mining industry, and has been attempting a comeback based on outdoor tourism.

Here’s What Else to Know:

— Canadian leader: Carney suspended his planned travel to Germany, where he was scheduled to give a speech Friday at the Munich Security Conference, an annual global defense and foreign policy forum. Messages of support and condolences poured in from global leaders.

— Royal reaction: King Charles III, who is the head of state of Canada, issued a statement Wednesday together with his wife, Queen Camilla: “We can only express our deepest possible sympathy to the families who are grieving the unimaginable loss of their loved ones and those awaiting news from hospital,” they said.

— Rare mass shooting: The violence in Tumbler Ridge was the second mass casualty event in British Columbia in the past 12 months, but a rare mass shooting for Canada. The deadliest in the country’s history took place in Nova Scotia, in 2020, when a gunman killed 22 other people in multiple locations, then killed himself.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Matina Stevis-Gridneff
c. 2026 The New York Times Company