It was the last day of the semester so a lot of students were milling around. The student area was busy, the cafeteria serving a Christmas dinner was busy, and some classes were still being held. This guy came in thru the students' entrance with a big garbage bag and proceeded to the dinner hall. He took out a semi-automatic AK-47 and started to shoot. After hitting a couple of women, he made his way up the floors and just shot randomly whenever he saw female students. Supposedly he was also shouting anti-feminist slurs during his rampage. On the third floor he found a class still in session, came inside and told all the men to leave the classroom and the women to stay at their desks. He then sprayed the area and killed 12 more women before turning the gun on himself.
I was on the fourth floor in the computer club room. We didn't know what it was at first but soon the news spreaded and we locked ourselves in our room as we were very close to the escalators and on his path. I was in a state of panic or shock because although I was fully conscious I couldn't move or talk. One of the students inside was a paratrooper so he put on several winter coats and went outside to help. After the police has arrived and started to evacuate the building, I grabbed my bag and headed downstairs. I didn't see the bloodbath in that classroom but saw a couple of bodies bleeding near the photocopy machines. Outside the school there were police cars all over, all the way to the main streets (our school is situated atop a mountain). I'm told later that the police commissioner on duty found one of his daughters among the victims.
French site with more information
For a year after that event I would have nighmares every week about a situation where I am being hunted by men with guns and I have to hide inside a school. Sometimes I would even fit inside a locker but pretty soon i would have to find another place to hide. After the first year I would have the nightmares again around the anniversary date and that pretty much lasted the whole month. Nowadays I would get the nightmare if my day was very stressful or I experienced something that scared me.
Yesterday I had the nightmare again. I think it was because I saw the first 15 minutes of the movie
Apt Pupil on television. After the scene where Ian McKellen's character describe what exactly happened in the gas chamber he supervised, I felt physically ill and had to take a walk. Then as I often do in stressful situations, I loaded up on the sugar and slept very late. The combination of that storyline and the overload of carbs is a sure way to guarantee
some sort of bad dream. Waking up from that school shooting nighmare, I was very sad for many reasons. Why was I reliving that again, 14 years after ? Why did it occur now, instead of sometime closer to December? Why me (repeat 3 times) ?
We all received some free counseling the month after and some of us didn't have to do our finals. My psychologist didn't push very much on the "school shooting vs Vietnam war" so I think the event stayed with me longer. I think he was digging for deeper issues than specifically going after the post-tramatic stress. Everytime I go back to Montréal to visit and I go back to the university, I take an hour looking at the commemorative plaque etched on the school wall and cry. It helps a little.
