High school students barricaded classroom doors with tables and chairs for at least two hours while a shooter — described as a “gunperson” in a “dress” — left nine dead and 25 injured during Canada’s deadliest school shooting in nearly 40 years.
Darian Quist, a 12th-grader, was in his mechanics class Tuesday afternoon when Tumbler Ridge Secondary School students in remote northeastern British Columbia were plunged into lockdown.
“For a while, I didn’t think anything was going on,” he told CBC. “I thought it was just like maybe a ‘Secure and hold’ but once everything starts circulating, we kind of realized something was wrong.”
Quist, his classmates and his teacher were all in the classroom — where they stayed for between two and two and a half hours — before being escorted out by cops. He did not hear the shooter go about their rampage.
Here’s the suspected “gunperson:”
Journalism is meant to clarify reality, not reshape it. The deceased suspect in one of Canada’s worst mass shootings is 18-year-old Jesse Strang, a biological male who ID's as transgender. Yet all legacy press describes the killer as “female.”
Facts should come before ideology pic.twitter.com/mxp6bs5lSn— Gerald Posner (@geraldposner) February 11, 2026
Exit questions:
How long do you expect the Canadian media and public to refer to the Tumbler Ridge trans mass sh—ter as a “woman”? Canada has had so few mass school sh—tings in its entire history that this will be hard for the media to memory hole and move away from.
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) February 11, 2026
So uh we're done justifying and administering hormones to preteens right? Like collectively we're all ready to admit we got that one wrong and it was a bad idea, right?
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 11, 2026