Kimveer Gill
Sep 14, 10:39 AM (ET)
By PHIL COUVRETTE
MONTREAL (AP) - A man with a black trench coat whose shooting rampage in a Montreal college killed one person and wounded 19 others before he was slain by police said on a blog in his name that he liked to play a role-playing Internet game about the Columbine shootings.
The gunman who opened fire at Dawson College on Wednesday was Kimveer Gill, 25, of Laval, near Montreal, a police official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity because authorities were not ready to announce it publicly yet.
Six victims remained in critical condition, including two in extremely critical condition.
The official said police had searched Gill's home.
In postings on a Web site called VampireFreaks.com, blogs in Gill's name show more than 50 photos depicting the young man in various poses holding a rifle and donning a long black trench coat and combat boots.
One photo has a tombstone with his name printed on it - below it the phrase: "Lived fast died young. Left a mangled corpse."
The last of six journal entries Wednesday was posted at 10:41 a.m, about two hours before the gunmen was shot to death at Dawson.
He said on the site that he was drinking whiskey in the morning and described his mood the night before as "crazy" and "postal."
He said on the site that he liked to play "Super Columbine Massacre," an Internet-based computer game that simulates the April 20, 1999, shootings at the Colorado high school by two of its students that left 13 people dead.
"His name is Trench. you will come to know him as the Angel of Death," he wrote on his vampirefreaks.com profile. "He is not a people person."
He wrote that he hates jocks, preppies, country music and hip-hop.
"Work sucks ... school sucks ... life sucks ... what else can I say? ... Life is a video game you've got to die sometime."
Below a picture of Gill aiming the barrel of a gun at the camera there's the inscription: "I think I have an obsession with guns ... muahahaha."
"Anger and hatred simmers within me," said another caption below a picture of Gill grimacing.
He wrote that he is 6-foot-1, was born in Montreal and is of Indian heritage. He said his weakness is laziness and that he fears nothing. Responding to the question, "How do you want to die?" Gill replied "like Romeo and Juliet - or in a hail of gunfire."
Gill wore a black trench coat during the shooting and opened fire in the cafeteria just as Columbine students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris did in 1999. Gill also maintained an online blog, similar to Klebold and Harris, devoted to gothic culture, heavy metal music such as Marilyn Manson, guns and journal entries expressing hatred against authority figures and "society."
A phone call to the home of Gill's family was answered by a woman said she heard about it through the media late Wednesday night. Police showed up shortly after,
A neighbor who lives across the street from the home said Gill was a loner.
"There were never any friends," Louise Leykauf said. "He kept to himself. He always wore dark clothing."
Montreal Police Chief Yvan Delorme said the lessons learned from other mass shootings had taught police to try to stop such assaults as quickly as possible.
"Before our technique was to establish a perimeter around the place and wait for the SWAT team. Now the first police officers go right inside. The way they acted saved lives," he said.
Witnesses said Gill started shooting outside the college, then entered the second-floor cafeteria and opened fire without uttering a word. At times, he hid behind vending machines before emerging to take aim - at one point at a teenager who tried to photograph him with his cell phone.
Police dismissed suggestions that terrorism played a role in the lunch-hour attack.
The gunman opened fire haphazardly at no target in particular, until he saw the police and took aim at them, Delorme said.
Police hid behind a wall as they exchanged fire with the gunman, whose back was against a vending machine, said student Andrea Barone, who was in the cafeteria. He said the officers proceeded cautiously because many students were trapped around the assailant, who yelled "Get back! Get back!" every time an officer tried to move closer.
Eventually, Barone said, the gunman went down in a hail of gunfire.
Delorme said some officers were at the school on an unrelated matter when the shooting erupted. He said reinforcements rushed to the scene and took part in the shooting.
Scores of students fled into the streets after the shooting began. Some had clothes stained with blood; others cried and clung to each other. Two nearby shopping centers and a daycare center also were evacuated and subway service was disrupted.
"I was terrified. The guy was shooting at people randomly. He didn't care, he was just shooting at everybody," said student Devansh Smri Vastava. "There were cops firing. It was so crazy."
Police said the attacker had a rapid-fire rifle and two other weapons. They did not provide details.
Although police initially suggested the gunman had killed himself, Delorme later said at a news conference that "based on current information, the suspect was killed by police."
"Today we have witnessed a cowardly and senseless act of violence unfold at Montreal's Dawson College," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said. "Our primary concern right now is to ensure the safety and recovery of all those who were injured during this tragedy."
The school was closed until Monday.
Canada's worst mass shooting took place in Montreal when gunman Marc Lepine, 25, killed 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnic on Dec. 6, 1989, before shooting himself.
That shooting spurred efforts for new gun laws achieved mainly as the results of efforts by survivors and relatives of Lepine's victims.
Dawson, with about 10,000 students, was the first English-language institution in Quebec's network of university preparatory colleges when it was founded in 1969.
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Associated Press writer Rob Gillies contributed to this report from Toronto.
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