La Loche shooting motive unclear, psychiatrist says

MEADOW LAKE, SASK.— A child psychiatrist says it’s not clear why a teen killed four people and injured seven in a shooting that devastated the northern Saskatchewan community of La Loche in January 2016.

Dr. Declan Quinn, who met with the teen four times, testified for the Crown as a court hearing resumed Tuesday to determine whether the teen will be sentenced as an adult or a youth.

“I’m as puzzled now as I was the first day I met him,” Quinn said.

The teen pleaded guilty this year to killing two brothers in a home in La Loche before shooting up the school where a teacher and an aide died.

Quinn told the court that the teenager “did not come across as being clearly developmentally delayed or slow,” although his vocabulary wasn’t very good because of his poor educational progress.

“Throughout the time that I was talking with him, he always seemed to be alert and oriented.” “He wanted to know why I’d come to see him. He interacted, for the most part, quite appropriately with me and seemed to be able to follow the conversation. At no time did he seem to be confused, mixed up or not understand what was going on when I was talking with him.”

Quinn said there’s no clear evidence that the teen was suicidal, although he described himself as “quite unhappy and quite depressed and very anxious.”

“He also expressed a terrible attitude towards school ... and he did not like school.”

Quinn said he was concerned that the teen was preoccupied with school shootings in the United States, specifically in Columbine, but the youth didn’t want to talk about those shootings or his own.

“I couldn’t get any indication about why he wanted to do it, what led to it happening, but he seemed to have got it planned as how he was doing it and didn’t want to give me details.”