Canadian authorities on Wednesday identified the suspect in a mass shooting in a remote community in British Columbia as an 18-year-old who killed her mother and stepbrother before fatally shooting several others at a local school.

Dwayne McDonald, a deputy commissioner at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia, said most of the victims were 12- or 13-year-old students killed in their school library. In all, he said, the shooter killed nine people, including herself; they had earlier given a mistaken death toll of 10.

McDonald said the suspect, Jesse Van Rootselaar, was biologically born male and began transitioning to female six years ago. He added that police would continue identifying her as a female. He said authorities were not yet able to say why the suspect had carried out the killing spree, one of the worst in Canadian history.

Van Rootselaar and her family were known to authorities, McDonald said, adding that police had last visited the home in the spring for mental health issues that included self-harm.

On one of those occasions, he said, “firearms were seized.”

He added that the police, who arrived at the school while the suspect was still shooting, had recovered a long gun and a modified handgun from the scene.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Tuesday afternoon that nine bodies had been recovered: those of six victims and the suspected shooter at the local secondary school, and two others at the private residence.

In addition, police said, two people were severely wounded and airlifted to a hospital, where they were in critical but stable condition. Officials had earlier said at least 25 people were wounded, but police clarified Wednesday that 25 people were assessed for possible injuries, but the majority were not physically hurt.

“This morning, families in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, woke to a different world,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday, speaking in Parliament.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the suspect died of a self-inflicted wound.

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.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Vjosa Isai/Alana Paterson
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