Gunman posted on blog that he liked Columbine game; Kimveer Gill kills himself after deadly rampage at Montreal college

MONTREAL (AP) - A 25-year-old man who mounted a deadly shootingrampage at a downtown Montreal college had posted pictures of himselfon the Internet with a rifle and said he was feeling "crazy" and"postal" and was drinking whiskey hours before the attack.

The man, identified by police as Kimveer Gill, also said on a blogthat he liked to play a role-playing Internet game about theColumbine High School shootings in Colorado and wanted to die "in ahail of gunfire."

In the end, Gill - dressed in a black trench coat like theColumbine shooters - put his own gun to his head and pulled thetrigger during a shootout with officers at Dawson College onWednesday, police said.

Gill, wielding a rapid-fire rifle and two other weapons, alreadyhad wounded 20 other people by the time he took his own life. One ofhis victims, an 18-year-old woman, later died. Four others remainedin critical condition Thursday, including three in extremely criticalcondition and one in a deep coma.

The Internet postings and neighbors' accounts reveal an angry,solitary young man who lived with his mother in Laval, near Montreal.He sported a mohawk, dressed in black and was filled with hatred foreveryone from jocks to preppies and everything from country music tohip-hop. He once worked for a carpet company and more recently anauto parts business.

"Work sucks ... school sucks ... life sucks ... what else can Isay? ... Life is a video game you've got to die sometime," he wrotein his profile for a Web site called vampirefreaks.com.

Authorities searched Gill's home Wednesday evening and seized hiscomputer and other belongings.

"I don't know what they found in the computer," said a woman whoanswered the phone at Gill's home and said she was his mother. "Theytook everything."

She described her son as "a good man."

"Just ask anybody. Ask the neighbors. He was a good son," thewoman told The Associated Press. She refused to give her name.

A neighbor across the street said he was a loner.

"There were never any friends," Louise Leykauf said. "He kept tohimself. He always wore dark clothing."

Another neighbor, Mariola Trutschnigg, said she noticed a changein his appearance in recent months when he "started wearing a mohawkand black clothes."

In postings on vampire freaks.com, blogs in Gill's name show morethan 50 photos depicting the young man in various poses holding arifle or a knife and wearing a black trench coat and combat boots.

One photo has a tombstone bearing his name and the epitaph: "Livedfast died young. Left a mangled corpse."

The last of six journal entries Wednesday was posted at 10:41 a.m,about two hours before Gill died at Dawson.

He said on the site that he felt "crazy" and was drinking whiskeythat morning and described his mood as "postal" the night before.

"Whiskey in the morning, mmmmmm, mmmmmmmmm, good !! :)," he wrote.

"His name is Trench. you will come to know him as the Angel ofDeath," Gill wrote at another point on his vampirefreaks.com profile."He is not a people person. He has met a handful of people in hislife who are decent. But he finds the vast majority to be worthless,no good, conniving, betraying, lying, deceptive."

This inscription is below a picture of Gill aiming a gun at thecamera: "I think I have an obbsetion (sic) with guns ... muahahaha."

"Anger and hatred simmers within me," said another caption below apicture of Gill grimacing.

He wrote that he is 6-foot-1, was born in Montreal and is ofIndian heritage. It was unclear whether he meant east Indian orAmerican Indian, but Gill is a common name in India.

He said his weakness is laziness and that he fears nothing.Responding to the question, "How do you want to die?" Gill replied"like Romeo and Juliet - or in a hail of gunfire."

Gill repeatedly said on his blogs that he loved black trenchcoats. He wore a black trench coat during the shooting and openedfire in the cafeteria just as Columbine students Dylan Klebold andEric Harris did in 1999.

He also maintained an online blog, similar to Klebold and Harris,devoted to Goth culture, heavy metal music such as Marilyn Manson,guns and journal entries expressing hatred against authority figuresand "society."

He said he liked to play "Super Columbine Massacre," an Internet-based computer game that simulates the April 20, 1999, shootings atthe Colorado high school when Klebold and Harris killed 13 people andthen themselves.

Gill complained that a video shooting game, "Postal 2," was toochildish. He wanted one that allowed him to kill more and go"beserk."

"I want them to make a game so realistic, that it looks and feelslike it's actually happening," he wrote in his blog.

Danny Ledonne, the creator of "Super Columbine Massacre," posted amessage of sympathy on his site.

"I am, like most, saddened by the news of the recent shooting atDawson College. I extend my condolences to those affected by thispainful event," Ledonne wrote.

A 23-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl accused in a triplemurder in Medicine Hat, Alberta, earlier this year also had profileson vampirefreaks.com.

Montreal Police Chief Yvan Delorme said the lessons learned fromother mass shootings had taught police to try to stop such assaultsas quickly as possible.

"Before our technique was to establish a perimeter around theplace and wait for the SWAT team. Now the first police officers goright inside. The way they acted saved lives," he said.

Delorme said some officers were at the school on an unrelatedmatter when the shooting began and reinforcements were sent in.

Witnesses said Gill started shooting outside the college, thenentered the second-floor cafeteria and opened fire without uttering aword. Anastasia DeSousa, 18, of Montreal was killed.

Police initially said Gill shot himself but later Wednesday theysaid they thought officers killed Gill during an exchange of fire. OnThursday, however, Francois Dore of the Quebec provincial police said"preliminary results of the autopsy showed that he died of self-inflicted wounds." Dore said police shot Gill in the arm before heturned his gun on himself.

Canada's worst mass shooting took place in Montreal when gunmanMarc Lepine, 25, killed 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnic on Dec. 6,1989, before shooting himself.

That shooting spurred efforts for new gun laws achieved mainly asthe results of efforts by survivors and relatives of Lepine'svictims.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it was too early to beginquestioning how tougher gun control laws might have avertedWednesday's rampage, but that current laws clearly did not work. "Thelaws we have didn't prevent this tragedy, which is why our governmentwill be in the future - because of this incident and many others -looking to make our laws more effective," Harper said.

Canadian laws prohibit the possession of unregistered handguns,and the rules for ownership of registered guns are stringent. Manypoliticians and police contend illegal guns flowing across the U.S.-Canada border are behind a recent spike in firearm violence.

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Associated Press writer Rob Gillies contributed to this reportfrom Toronto.

Copyright 2003 by Telegraph-Herald, All rights Reserved.