Maddy Mansky, 12, is held by her mother Alysha Mansky in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., on Monday. Maddy hid in the washroom while the shooter attacked the school.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
Temporary school trailers will arrive in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., this week as the district starts preparing for local secondary-school students to resume classes after the mass shooting in the town.
The new trailers will be set up on the grounds of the local elementary school, located about a kilometre away from the town’s secondary school, according to the B.C. government. The secondary school has been closed since last Tuesday’s shooting, and it’s not yet known when classes will continue there.
The community of 2,400 is still struggling to come to terms with a horrific crime that left nine dead. Five students and an educator were killed in the secondary school, and the shooter was also found dead there. The shooter’s mother and half-brother were killed at a nearby home. It was one of Canada’s deadliest mass killings.
B.C. Premier David Eby said on a visit to Tumbler Ridge Friday that no student would be forced to return to the secondary school. That led some in the community to ask whether the school would reopen at all. After the U.S. school shooting at Sandy Hook elementary in Connecticut, for example, the building was demolished by authorities.
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Maddy Mansky, a 12-year-old student in seventh grade at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, said she wants to return to the school and its classrooms.
“I want the school to stay. I don’t want them to tear it down,” Maddy said. “Even though us kids are scared, we should face our fear. Because it’s most likely not going to happen again.”
The students who were killed were her friends and classmates. Some played on her soccer team.
She said that despite the tragedy, she wants to be in those halls again, where she can recall happy memories of playing tag and going outside at lunch to the nearby recreation centre.
Maddy’s memory of that day is harrowing.
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A few minutes before the shooting broke out, she was given permission to go to the bathroom, she said in an interview Monday. She was there with two other female students. The rest of their class was at the library, where they were planning to do research for a project, she said.
One student walked out of the bathroom to rejoin the class and a moment later, there was a loud bang. That student died in the mass shooting.
Maddy, who was still inside the bathroom, recalls hearing several-more loud bangs and the sound of what she thought were shells falling to the floor. There was screaming and shouting, she said, and she realized the sound was likely gunfire.
“I ran into the bathroom stall, locked the door and sat on the toilet with my feet,” she said.
It was just instinct, she explained. She could hear what was happening in the hallway and she was so frightened that she could scarcely breathe.
“I just waited. I texted my mom and everybody that I could,” she said.
Duncan McKay was in gym class at Tumbler Ridge High School when he first heard gunshots. The 17-year-old student recounts what he saw and heard during the mass shooting as he, fellow students and a teacher hid in an equipment room.
Her mother, Alysha Mansky, was resting at the time preparing for a night shift.
The text from her daughter said “Mum, wake up now. There’s a shooting. Call the cops.”
Ms. Mansky replied and told her to shut off the volume on her device. She told her daughter to stay still until police came for her.
“I can’t breathe,” Maddy texted.
“You need to take a deep breath. Arms above your head, breathe,” her mother answered.
Eventually, police rescued the girl.
Her mother recalls standing outside the school with other parents, knowing what was going on, desperate to run inside and find her daughter despite the danger.
“As a mom, it’s the worst call you’re ever going to get in your life,” Ms. Mansky said. “It was the hardest thing to do as parents, not to run in that building. We know our babies are in there. We know what’s happening,”
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Ms. Mansky said she supports her daughter’s desire to go back to the school.
She didn’t know how strongly her daughter felt until a relative told her that Maddy had written about it on social media. In a post replying to a parent who suggested the district close the school until the end of the year, Maddy said that’s not what she wants.
“You parents have to show us kids it will be ok,” Maddy wrote.
“I am so unbelievably proud of her. It takes so much strength and so much courage,” Ms. Mansky said.
“You have to find a way to deal with it. So even though I’m terrified, and I’d rather she never go anywhere without me ever again, what are you going to do?”
The first set of trailers will arrive this week, according to a joint release from B.C.’s Ministry of Education and Child Care, the Ministry of Infrastructure and the local school district. There will be 14 in total. Double-wide trailers, which the government described as “more permanent” and more spacious, will take longer to be delivered.
The ministry said the new facilities will serve the secondary school “until community input, expert advice and future plans can be confirmed.”