Meadow Lake Provincial Court. Photo courtesy of Chelsea Laskowski.
WARNING: This story contains graphic details that may trouble some readers.
La Loche’s community safety committee says the teen who killed four and injured seven during a mass shooting that ended with a surrender to police in the Dene Building high school “acted like a coldblooded killer.”
This comment came in one of 11 victim impact statements read in Meadow Lake court and via video link to La Loche’s courtroom on Tuesday.
The dense, emotional and at times, graphic, hearing for the young offender comes after the Crown prosecutor applied to have the now-19-year-old offender sentenced as an adult. He entered guilty pleas to first-degree, second-degree and attempted murder for all 11 direct victims in October, and cannot be named due to the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
When he was escorted in on Tuesday there was little reaction, and he seemed attentive, looking around the room as prosecutors laid out what they’ll be presenting in court over two weeks, which has been split into this week and another week in mid-June.
Court then received the first public view of chilling school surveillance video and crime scene photos from January 22, 2016. They showed the shooter’s 11-minute rampage through the Dene Building up to his surrender to police, which came after he shot and killed teen brothers Dayne and Drayden Fontaine at their grandmother’s home. That day, the offender had a large cache of at least eight shotguns and rifles, as well as ammunition, stored in the basement of that home before opening fire while the brothers were at home preparing to go back to school after eating lunch.
Evidence presented in the morning made clear the offender came into the shooting with some premeditation of the events to come. Back in September of 2015 he had a conversation with a friend in which the offender talked about shooting up the school. His phone and Ipad’s search history from January 2016 show terms like “school shootings in Canada” and “what does it feel like to kill someone.” The names of the Columbine shooters are among his final search terms at 11:16 a.m., only an hour or so before the shootings commenced.
It was an emotional day, with sniffles heard over the video feed to La Loche’s court. In Meadow Lake when footage of all four of the deceased victims were shown, the few non-media and non-police members of the public consoled each other as they sobbed.
The full scope and severity of what happened was further punctuated by recordings of 911 calls coming from within the school in the minutes during and after the shooting. Whether the voices on the other end were frantic, calm, whispering, or pleading for help, all cases portrayed the desperation and fear within the school as callers hid under desks or in closets, or tended to their classmates wounds.
In total the Crown’s evidence amounts to 46 victim impact statements, multiple psychological reports, transcriptions of the offender’s statements to police, police evidence, a binder that belongs to the offender, and video and photo evidence.