3 hurt in Toronto school shooting

TORONTO, FEB. 11. Three youths were shot and wounded, one seriously, at a Toronto high school yesterday and police were hunting for one or two suspects in the latest incident of gun violence to rock a North American school.

Sgt. Bruce Warren of the Metro Toronto Police said two young men used handguns in the attack in a parking lot at the Emery Collegiate Institute.

Police told reporters that security cameras at the school may have caught the shootings on tape. Detectives were questioning students and witnesses at the local police station about the shooting.

The three victims were rushed to a hospital, one with life- threatening injuries. Police said a 17-year-old boy was in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the chest while an 18- year-old was stable after being shot in the abdomen. Both were in hospital.

``Doctors are working on them. We have no further details,'' said Mr. Craig Duhamel, the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center spokesman.

Another 17-year-old was treated at a hospital near the school with a wound to his right arm.

Police released little information about the suspects. ``We are doing the best we can. It's going to be a slow process and we're going to know more tomorrow,'' said Constable Richard Cashmore.

The incident comes less than a year after the last high school shooting in Canada in which one student was killed and another wounded in the quiet western farming community of Taber in southern Alberta.

The Taber shooting last April shocked the nation, partly because it occurred just days after the massacre at the Columbine High School in Colorado, where two students went on a shooting rampage, killing 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.

The Toronto shooting occurred in a parking lot at Emery during a snowstorm after most classes for the 1,000 students had ended.

- Reuters.

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