Ottawa Shooting Lockdown: Shooter Killed In Parliament Building, Soldier Dead
The city of Ottawa is on lockdown after multiple shooting incidents in and around Parliament Hill, Canada’s federal government headquarters. There were shots fired at the National War Memorial, in the Parliament building and at the Rideau Center, a nearby shopping mall.
The shootings began when a man shot an honor guard soldier at the National War Memorial in the abdomen. Jason Kenney, a senior minister in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, said the soldier had been killed, but there was no official confirmation of his identity. The soldier was a reservist from Hamilton, Ontario.
Ottawa Hospital confirmed that it had received three patients wounded in the incident. Two were in stable condition, but the hospital did not confirm the status of the third patient, the soldier first shot and reported killed at the National War Memorial. One of the patients was shot in the leg in the Parliament building, according to the Ottawa Citizen.
One shooter has reportedly been shot and killed. Police were looking for at least two more shooters. So far no one had been injured at the Rideau Center and some reports from the ground said a police vehicle blocking the entrance to the mall had been moved. The Rideau Center is a six-minute walk from the Parliament Hill complex, according to the Toronto Star.
Most buildings in the area were on lockdown. The “perimeter” of the lockdown was expanded “substantially” since Wednesday morning, according to the CBC. All buses in the area were being rerouted. A live stream of CBC’s coverage of the shooting can be found here.
Neither the U.S. Capitol Police nor Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department had raised their alertness because of the incident. The Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. was on lockdown. The White House said it was ready to assist Canadian authorities.
Harper was scheduled to address the nation Wednesday night. The Canadian government has not officially named the shootings a terrorist attack.
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