Kylie Smith, a 12-year-old girl who loved art and dreamed of going to university in Toronto, left for school with her brother Ethan on Tuesday, just as she did every morning.
The red brick complex of the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School was where the siblings learned and played alongside dozens of other children in the small remote community of just 2,400 in rural British Columbia.
But the rhythm of another school day was devastatingly shattered when shots rang through the halls.
Ethan crouched in a utility closet and messaged his parents. Kylie was not with him.
It would take hours, her father, Lance Young, said in an interview on Wednesday, before he learned his daughter had been killed in one of the worst mass shootings in Canadian history.
The shooter, identified by the authorities as Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, used two firearms to kill six people and herself at the school, after killing her mother and 11-year-old stepbrother in their home, plunging Tumbler Ridge and the rest of the country into stunned grief.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Wednesday said that Ms. Van Rootselaar had a history of mental illness and was known to the authorities, who had visited her home in the past, including in the spring. She had dropped out of school about four years ago, the police said, and had began transitioning from male to female around that time.
Now the names and lives of some of the victims are emerging through online tributes to their brief lives.
Abel Mwansa Jr. was a bright, smiling 12-year-old boy who was scheduled to celebrate his 13th birthday next month, according to a Facebook post. The son of immigrants from Zambia, his father was a pastor. He started seventh grade at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in September. On Tuesday, he did not make it back home.
“If I had power to give life I would have brought you back to life together with others that where killed alongside you but son my power is limited,” his father, Abel Mwansa Sr., wrote in the Facebook post accompanied by a photo of the boy.
“Seeing your child murdered at this age is heartbreaking. I was broken when I saw you packed in that BLACK BAG lifeless and zipped up like those we see in movies was devastating.”
Ezekiel Schofield, 13, an avid hockey player with a local team, was also killed in the shooting, his grandfather Peter Schofield said in a Facebook post.
Not yet named among the dead are two more girls and a 39-year-old female educator.
Maya Gebala, 12, is fighting for her life at the British Columbia Children’s Hospital in Vancouver. Maya was shot in the head and neck and was in critical condition. “We are told it is bleak,” her mother, Cia, wrote in a Facebook message late Wednesday.
The family is raising money for Maya’s care, and her mother said in a message that she wanted more doctors to have “eyes on her.” But in a public post on Wednesday evening, she said doctors were not optimistic.
On a Facebook post that included photos of her holding Maya’s hand in the hospital, as well as photos of her playing hockey, her mother wrote:
“My climber.
My builder.
My hockey star.
Fight hard baby.
They say you cant.
They don’t know you like we do.”
Matina Stevis-Gridneff is the Canada bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the country.
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