‘Senseless act of violence:’ La Loche school offering supports to students after incident

The incident that left two people injured and one in police custody in La Loche on Thursday has been confirmed to be a stabbing.

Georgina Jolibois, the mayor of La Loche, said she believes the incident involved two 15-year-old boys and an educational assistant in his early 20s.

Jolibois said it started with a fight at the canteen between the two students that escalated when one student pulled out a knife. A crowd of students gathered around the incident, which was noticed by the EA, who tried to intervene.

One of the boys and the EA sustained injuries. Both have been flown with their families to a hospital in Saskatoon. Jolibois is not aware of the extent of their injuries.

It happened at the same high school that experienced a school shooting less than a decade ago.

Jason Young, director of education with the Northern Lights School Division, said the task at hand is collecting all the information about what happened Thursday.

“We’re just gathering all those pieces to get a better sense of what took place,” he said.

Little information has been shared about the Thursday incident that left two injured and one person in police custody. The Saskatchewan RCMP has not released any details about the incident and has not yet responded to requests for comment.

Young said a student at the school stabbed another student during a fight on Thursday at 2:30 p.m. An educational assistant intervened, he said, and was also stabbed. Young said both remain in hospital.

He said the school division is still processing everything that happened.

“I’m in the middle of just processing all the information as well. We got in (Friday) morning (and) there was a serious incident that took place,” Young explained.

He did classify the incident as “a senseless act of violence.”

“We’re here trying to make sense of it all to ensure that we can keep our students and staff safe,” he added.

In 2016, a 17-year-old gunman killed two people at a home in La Loche and then killed two people and injured seven others at Dene High School.

“Certainly there are some that are reliving trauma,” Young said, saying the latest incident has brought the 2016 shooting to the minds of people in the community.

At the time of the 2016 shooting, Young was a superintendent of education with the school division. Student services was one of his areas of responsibility and he said he was very involved in the aftermath of the disaster, which included providing supports to students.

Young called Thursday’s incident another reminder about the realness of these situations and the resulting damages. He said his initial thoughts after hearing about the incident were of the victims, staff and students at the school and their community.

“I wanted to make sure we can be there for them in the way that we can be from the educational side,” Young said.

He said long-term supports are needed in their community for the ongoing wellness of staff and students.

A day after this most recent incident, Young said the school is open for students and staff to come and receive supports from a counselling team at the school.

“I’m seeing students in the building today. It’s great to see … That’s a good sign,” Young said.

Hoping to move forward in a healthy way, Young said he’s grateful for the response from emergency personnel to the incident and work by staff to respond to and care for students, as well as the counselling teams at the school Friday.

He called it a true representation of what it means for their community to be “Dene strong.”

Young will also be travelling to Saskatoon, according to Jolibois.

The mayor said mental health and addictions help will remain in the community in the coming days.

— With files from 650 CKOM’s Brent Bosker and The Canadian Press