Student suspect held in Canadian high school stabbings

April 20, 2000
Web posted at: 5:29 p.m. EDT (2129 GMT)

From staff and wire reports

OTTAWA (CNN) -- Five people -- three boys, a girl and a school administrator -- were stabbed Thursday at a high school near Ottawa by a 15-year-old boy, police said.

The attacks came on the first anniversary of the infamous Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, and near the first anniversary of another deadly high school shooting in western Canada.

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The suspect in Thursday's stabbings was also injured and is in custody, police said.

Victims were treated at a local hospital, and none of the injuries was life-threatening, a police spokesman said. No motive has been determined, he added.

The attack started outside the Cairine Wilson High School library and ended in the computer room, where the school principal talked the suspect into giving up his knife, the spokesman said.

"It was crazy. Blood. I don't expect this to happen here, of all places," one student told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Weeping parents quickly gathered outside the school. Some students, clearly shaken, could be seen leaving the school.

The attack occurred one year to the day that 12 students and a teacher were shot to death at Columbine High by two students who then committed suicide.

Eight days later, a 15-year-old walked into a high school in the small western Canadian town of Taber, Alberta, and shot a 17-year-old student to death. A second student was wounded.

The youth, charged with murder, emerged from a coma last December after surgery for a congenital heart condition but has still not gone to trial.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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