Gunmen Kill 14 Women at Canada School

Three gunmen rampaged through the University of Montreal engineering school on Wednesday and killed at least 14 women, with many more people wounded, university officials said. One of the gunmen then killed himself.

Police said one assailant was arrested and that officers were searching the engineering building for the third man.

Montreal Police Director Claude St. Laurent said three men, one carrying a rifle, walked into a classroom and yelled in French “You’re all a bunch of feminists!” and then the man carrying the rifle began firing.

St. Laurent said the men then went on a shooting spree that ended only when one man shot himself to death and a second was arrested by a SWAT team.

All of those killed were women, said Louis Courville, director of the engineering school, his voice shaking.

“I saw the bodies of the people who were slain--they were all women,” Courville said.

Police said they could not confirm that all the victims were women.

One student said a bullet passed his leg and he brought his hands up in a pleading gesture. The gunman left him alone.

“He was clearly gunning for the women,” the student said.

Earlier, witnesses had referred to only one young man, dressed in a hunting outfit, who roamed the halls and classrooms of the building with a rifle shooting indiscriminately.

“It was a human hunt,” student Francois Bordeleau said. “We were the quarry.”

“All I know is that a crazy guy came in here and began shooting at anything that moved,” said Dominique Berube, 22, one of scores of terrified students who ran from the building.

Some witnesses told police one of the gunmen entered a classroom on the second floor of the building at about 5:20 p.m. EST and divided the students by sex.

They said he ordered the men out of the classroom and then fired a number of rounds.

It was not immediately clear how many women in the classroom may have been shot.

Students said the man emerged from the classroom, fired three or four shots at a group of people and ran up a flight of stairs.

Bordeleau said he heard 20 to 30 shots and the man appeared to be aiming mainly at women.

“I heard the gunman say: ‘I want the women,” ’ Bordeleau said.

Several other witnesses confirmed that the gunman said that.

Student Eric Chavarie said the gunman “told us to stop everything. And then when we looked at him we thought it was a joke, but he fired a shot in the air and separated us into two groups, the guys in one corner and the girls in (another) corner.

“When that was done he asked the guys to leave, he left the girls in there.”

Lucien Justin, who was in the computer room, said the assailant first aimed at the wall there and then ran out.

“Somebody locked the door but he shot off the lock and then left a second time,” he said.

“I was terribly afraid, I ran like hell.”