The police have confirmed that the man who went on a shooting spree at Dawson College, Montreal, on September 13 was 25-year-old Indo-Canadian Kimveer Gill, who lived in the basement of his parents' home -- Gurinder Gill and Parvinder Sandhu -- in the middle-class neighborhood of Laval.
In the rampage, Gill killed an 18-year-old student Anastasia De Sousa and 19 others were seriously wounded.
Reports say as he shot and wounded De Sousa, her boyfriend came in between and pleaded Gill to leave her but he disregarded that and shot her several times.
Reports also reveal that the police followed Gill inside the college as he had started shooting even before he entered the college.
In the shootout with the police, he was hit in his arm and then committed suicide, shooting himself in the head, the autopsy showed.
Initial reports said that the police took him down after he refused to drop his weapons.
Gill's mother called her son a good man. He was a good son'.
The Toronto Star, in a report, quoted her saying that the authorities searched the home and seized Gill's computer.
'I don't know what they found in the computer. They took everything,' she was quoted as saying.
'He scared me,' Benoit Lavoie, a neighbor is quoted in media reports as confiding. 'He used to walk by himself, dressed in black, with his black boots,' Lavoie says.
Gill has two brothers -- Anmol and Balroop -- who also live in the same house with the parents.
On the fateful day at about 10.30 a.m. Gill, reports say, had his breakfast of eggs and toasts, washed it with his favourite drink whiskey, put on his black coat and boots as he drove in his black sunbird to the Dawson College.
While Gill loved the Goth culture of black clothes, edgy music and macabre poetry, Mohawk spiky hair and social alienation, people who belong to the culture disagree they believe in any kind of violence.
But those who profess Goth culture say their chosen method of self-expression is all about music and fashion, not violence.
'These people have very tragically and unfortunately made a correlation between Goth culture and mass murder, and have really managed to take the black trench coat and made it a symbol that will be difficult to erase,' Michael Hoechsmann, a McGill University educational psychologist is quoted in media reports as saying.
Irrespective of what followers of Goth culture or academics might be saying, Gill pledged his allegiance to Goth culture and his fascination with weapons and violent death.
A report in the Toronto Star reveals he recently sent his photo to his friend Andrew Page with his new semi-automatic gun and predicted 'we'd be seeing him on CNN'.
'When the attack happened, I had a hunch it might be him because I knew what kind of a guy he was,' Page is quoted as saying in Le Presse.
Another question that everybody in Canada is asking is about the much-touted Gun Registry, something on which the government has spent billions of dollars.
People are wondering how such legal requirements did not stop a troubled child like Gill from legally acquiring not one but three weapons.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper had earlier pledged to dismantle the gun registry. Quebec Premier Jean Charest said on September 14 in Montrreal that he would fight Harper's plans.
"I told Mr Harper that he can certainly expect a tense debate about the registry," an emotional Charest said.
Many Indo-Canadians are distressed over the developments. "When I heard about the shooting at Dawson and saw some South Asian students being interviewed on TV, I was praying that none from our community was amongst the 20 victims, but what a shock and disbelief when I heard the man who went on the shooting spree was an Indo-Canadian,' said one University professor.
"Our people, all of us in fact, would be walking with our heads down in shame but also grief, grief for the innocent victims," he said.


