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Students run for cover as a plainclothes police officer, centre, watches on. (Peter McCabe/Canadian Press)

In Depth

Dawson College

Shootings in a Montreal college

Last Updated September 15, 2006

On the afternoon of Sept. 13, 2006, Kimveer Gill entered Dawson College in downtown Montreal with three guns and began shooting people.

Within minutes, an 18-year-old business student named Anastasia De Sousa was killed, 19 people were wounded and Gill had ended his own life.

On a personal web page updated just hours before he started his rampage, Gill called himself "Trench" and wrote: "You will come to know him as the Angel of Death."

Eyewitnesses said they had seen a tall, goth-looking man in a long black coat drive up near the college on Maisonneuve Street in a black Pontiac Sunfire at about 12:30 p.m., get out of his car, open the trunk and remove a rifle.

The gunman then walked toward the college's southwest entrance. Witnesses said he shot at least one person outside before entering the building. Police said the first gunshots were heard at 12:41 p.m.

It was lunchtime and the school was packed when the gunman entered through the main doors and headed to the cafeteria. "He was shooting randomly," said Dawson student Michel Boyer, who witnessed the gunfire. "I'm not sure who he was shooting at, but the [cafeteria] atrium was completely cleared."

The College is a CEGEP that serves about 10,000 students.

Gill published a web page that contained journal items posted from the same day of the shooting and pictures of himself brandishing guns and knives.

"Work sucks ... School sucks ... Life sucks ... What else can I say?" he wrote in the online journal that he started in 2005.

Gill took on the alias fatality666. On his web page, he posted pictures of himself with combat boots, a knife and several of his rifles. A photo gallery accompanying the profile includes pictures of Gill with a Beretta CX4 Storm semi-automatic rifle. Some pictures show him wearing a black coat and holding a rifle. The caption below the bottom photo reads: "Ready for Action."

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