The Current - How one Tumbler Ridge teacher kept his students safe

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Mechanical shop teacher Jarbas Noronha told his students to barricade the door and prepare to flee out of the garage, if the killer made it inside. He kept them calm while they got frightening messages about the attack unfolding outside their classroom. "I had 15 students under my watch and my whole focus was to get these 15 students out safe," he says.

The firehose of news from America can feel like a lot these days. If you're trying to figure out what to make of it all, we got you. I'm Katie Simpson. And I'm Paul Hunter. We're correspondents here in Washington. Working just around the corner from where much of the action is taking place. Two blocks from the White House. And that's the name of our new podcast. For top-notch analysis of U.S. politics from a Canadian perspective,

find two blocks from the White House every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. including YouTube. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Tumblr Ridge continues to mourn for the people they have lost. RCMP have now identified all eight victims shot and killed on Tuesday. At Tumblr Ridge Secondary School, 12-year-old Abel Mwanza, 13-year-old, Ezekiel Schofield, 12-year-old Kylie Smith, 12-year-old, Zoe Benoit, 12-year-old, Takaria Lampert, and educational assistant

Shonda Avugana Durand. And at the home of the shooter, 11-year-old Emmett Jacobs, and the shooter's mother, Jennifer Strang, identified by police using her legal name, Jennifer Jacobs. Takaria Lampert's mother, Sarah, spoke to media about her daughter yesterday. I'm not only here as a grieving mother. I am here. I am here. being the voice of a beautiful, strong voice that was silenced. My daughter was a gift from the very start of her journey, an actual rose grown from the ashes, a family hero, even just in her existence.

The shooter's biological father released a statement yesterday expressing sympathies to the families affected, saying he had no contact with the shooter. The father of Emmett Jacobs also released his statement saying he had also been estranged from the children for eight years, and adding, quote, I send out much heartfelt prayers to all families, especially to the ones affected and who lost their loved ones. I feel your pain, and I am having an extremely hard time processing this all. Today, Prime Minister Mark Carney and opposition leader Pierre Pollyev will be in the community to join a memorial. As people in Tumblr Ridge grieve, they are also relieved for those.

who survived the violence and thankful to those who helped during that time when the shooter was on the attack. Like the staff at the high school, here is grade 12 student, Darien Quist, describing to CBC Radio West host Sarah Penton how he survived the lockdown, huddled in his shop class. I was definitely pretty scared. I was wondering if we were formulating an escape plan if anyone did come up to the door that we were going to run out to the garage door. How many of you were there in the classroom? classroom at the time? Maybe 15, I think, maybe 14. Was a teacher there with you? Yeah, Mr. Neronia was our teacher. Yeah. What was he doing? He was just making sure everyone was in the correct place, making sure

everything was going smoothly. I think once we realized, kind of organized us all to start moving the tables towards the doors and just formulating our escape plan if anything did happen. Now that teacher, Darien Quist, spoke of, is Jarvis Noronia. And I spoke with Jarbis. yesterday. Jarvis, how are you doing now? It's been a couple of days. Well, as far as the whole chaos, I'm fine. I think I'm better than a lot of other people in town. We got out safe and now just digesting everything is happening afterward. You heard there just a little bit from your student, Darien. When did you all realize that something was amiss? Yes, one of my other students asked to go out to fetch his

car because my students are allowed to work on their cars during the class. And as he was driving back, he talked to us that he heard some gunshots. While having this conversation, our alarm went off and the principal in the hallway talk to one other students that was a lockdown. We lock our doors and I assemble all the students to one corner of the shop and we started debating what to be our next step. The shop has some very heavy tables, heavy metal tables. We use these tables to barricade the doors just to buy some time if somebody decides to go through the doors. And we made a escape plan in the case of the tabare breaks in and we would go out through one of the two garage doors to the shop. How were you able to come up with this plan when this real threat was around you? Were you leading

the group at that point? Oh, yes. I am a little bit on the logical side, and yes, I have quite a few experiences for my past. So I just at that moment I knew I had 15 students under my watch, and my whole focus was, I want to get these 15 students out of here safe. Yeah. Yeah, we had a discussion with them, look, we cannot do anything about what's happening in the rest of the school, because they are receiving messages from other students from other rooms. We cannot worry about anybody else right now but about us.

Okay, that means we have to watch each other. My whole goal was to have the students very calm, to be able to move them if we need to. So they were learning what was happening because they were receiving texts from other kids inside the school? Yeah, they are contacting their family members and they are contacting the other brothers and sisters. that were hiding other spots on the school, other place in the school.

So, yeah, we are receiving a lot to random information, different cell phones. So I really want them not to panic. So we are saying with a plan, we keep out together. And I just, like I said, I want to be sure they were, like, calm enough to follow instructions to get out of that spot if you have to. Were you able to keep them calm? I'd say for the hardness of the situation, yes, they were very nervous, but they were able to act if you need to. They're together. They behaved excellent. I was amazed by then. You mentioned that you are a very logical person and that you've had instances in your past that allow you to be this way. What is it about you that you were able to react in this manner? Well, I'm a science teacher. Okay, I always like math and science. That's one side of it. And second,

I have traveled a lot, and the many things I have seen like guerrilla warfare. I have been stopped by, you name it, any kind of like crazy situation when you're traveling to Central America countries in the 80s and 90s. I have been through that. So, yeah, I think that helps build up a little bit of confidence, a little bit of like stay calm, when the things are really bad. Yeah. Those kids, it sounds like we're lucky to have you.

Well, we are all locked to be on the right spot at that situation. The mechanical shop was the furthest point zone, whatever thing happened. And we had two big exit doors. If you need to, that means we're not trapped in a corner. So, yeah, the whole situation for us, 16, was a blessing. You had a plan, because I understand inside that shop, there are garage doors, which you could access, although you didn't know what was going on around you and didn't know if you could leave,

but it was a point that you could leave from if you needed to. Yeah, we kind of knew it because this is a very tall garage door, and we have like little windows that were you cannot reach or cannot look outside. But a couple times we put our cell phones there in the record a little bit, where you could see on the top of the hill, some cop cars, things like that. We kind of had a view of the outside. If you need to choose that, it would be a safe way to go. I did warn the students, look, if you have to walk out of this door, I am going to open the garage door first.

I'm going to wave out to be sure that we are seeing and we are walk one by one out. Your hands up and no backpack and nothing on your body. Okay, remember, we have cops outside. They are on their nerves and the situation is really critical. So do not do any study movement. Just walk out after I open the door. if you have two. You are inside of that room for two hours,

and I don't know how much of that time you heard gunshots and were receiving texts of information of the horrific things that were happening, but how did you manage... That's a long time, two hours. How did you get through it? It's a long time. We managed to go through by talking often.

Every time I saw a little group of students, two or three, they're just sitting around a cell phone. I try to get to talk, to share between us what was our plan, what was next to do. I really did not want any panic to build that. And when were you finally, what was it like when you were finally able to leave? How did that happen? The cops knocked our door and they identified themselves. And I told, yes, here, Mr. Noronia, 15 students with me, we are all safe. And they direct us through the hallway towards outside of the school. By the time you are walking through the highway, I could see army personnel all over the place.

I have begun all over in every direction, and just swat things, everything we imagine. And then we walk out of the emergency door, lots and lots of blue and red lights clicking all over the place. And then we walk all the way to the rec center that's around 300 and 400 meters from our spot. How long before you realized just how bad the situation was? I think I started just the very next morning. Yes, I knew that it was some victims because some of the pictures went through the kid's cell phone. I had no idea how many. I had no idea who there were.

And we gathered together at the rec center. And you could see some few groups of people sobbing. I would imagine that each group was a family of a victim. But I got to know the numbers just next morning. I'm so sorry for your loss. I know you lost a colleague, five students, just 12 and 13 years old, died in this attack. Yes, I was with my 11-12 grades at mechanical class.

Just one hour prior, I was with my 7-grade students that were they, where all the victims come from the seventh grade class. Yeah, they had been with me just 45 minutes prior. Did any of them pass away? Yeah, the kids that were shot, all the victims, they were from the 70 grade class, and they had been with me just one hour prior on the previous class. I'm so sorry. Have you been talking to their parents? Like, what kind of connections are you making now in the wake of all of this? Well, the city overall, we are having an overwhelming support, psychological support. You'll name it.

The city, the community is nice and well together. And now I was told to stay home and await new directions from the school, how we are going to proceed. Yes, the things are still settling and there's a lot, a lot of things to be decided still. now only time you tell what's happened will happen. You sound extremely strong through all of this, and I imagine, you know, there aren't a lot of people who are feeling this way right now,

and I hope you're taking care of yourself, and I do appreciate that you told this story to us. I know it's not the first time you've told it. So I just want to thank you for making this time for us today. Okay, thank you. Jarvis Noronia teaches Mechanical Shop at Tumblr Ridge Secondary School. If you're worried about feeling lonely in the afterlife, why not hire a corpse bride? In Lindsay Wong's new novel, a grad student becomes a corpse bride to pay off her family's debt.

If that sounds made up, think again. Here's what Lindsay told me on my podcast bookends. In Chinese culture, there's this idea of an arranged deaf marriage. It's called Ming Hun. And so sometimes we'll just try to find another dead body or they'll try to find a living person. Usually a marginalized person, they'll kill them and put them in a coffin. Check out the rest of that conversation on bookends with me, Matea Roach, wherever you get your podcasts. Wade Diceman is a criminologist and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the Fraser Valley and joins us now. Good morning.

Good morning. Wade, it's been a tough few days. What was your first thought when you heard about this? My heart absolutely sank, you know, having some experience as a criminologist with this kind of thing. immediately went to the question of whether this was an active shooter, because I heard about it, of course, when it was first evolving, and then just complete devastation at learning of the outcome. You know, police have talked about the family home of the shooter had been the subject of police calls related to mental health and weapons in the past two years.

In fact, there was an instance when the shooter was actually apprehended under the Mental Health Act and take into hospital for assessment. How do police review all of this information? And there seems to be more and more coming out every day as we learn new details. Yeah, I think it's a really important question and insight that our understanding of the factors and circumstances is really still evolving

on a kind of day-by-day basis, right? We just had a statement, I think, come out from the biological father and from the father of the brother. So I think, you know, in those circumstances, I think the challenge for the police is how to kind of observe their duty of care to the community and share information when it's factually reliable so that it doesn't kind of put the community and the larger public in a kind of position of speculation. I think we don't know the whole factual background of what happened with the weapons in the household. We do know that there was a permit. We know the permit expired.

It appears to have been a permit for a youth, but it expired a couple of years ago. So there's some kind of question around that. And so I think, you know, I would caution. I think these are early days, to be honest. And really the focus of police efforts really, I think, have to be more on the focus on the care for the community, compassion, empathy, and just kind of restoring a sense of safety and order. Some of the longer-term investigative work, which will require conversations with the community members, I think, won't happen for a little while now. What do you mean by that? What kinds of conversations?

Well, I think, you know, unlike a case where they're going to, they would be looking for the perpetrator, in this case, you know, we know who the perpetrator was. They're not trying to establish a record of evidence in order to bring something to court. I think the looming question in this case is about motivation. And this, of course, is the question in the community about, you know, why did this happen? And so to establish kind of what the background kind of conditions were, what the formative factors were, it's going to require talking to people. And it sounds to me like, you know, some people in the community already had an aware We do know that the police had an awareness, but the questions are going to be around how that file was handled. Who else knew where the reports came from, all of that kind of stuff? And I think, you know, it's not going to be about looking to find blame. It's not a fault-finding exercise at this point. It's an opportunity to try to look for preventative factors and as a teachable moment to go forward.

I just want to go back to the weapons for a minute because I think, Some people might be surprised on how young you can be to have a firearms license or how young you can be to be allowed to shoot one. Just remind us what we know about that. Yeah, so apparently the shooter had a youth license, which they can get up until actually the permit. This is where I was stuck. The permit lasts until the person turns 18 years old. And from our information, the shooter just turned 18, but we're told that the permit expired two years ago. So there's some kind of discrepancy there.

That's what I was alluding to. But that permit doesn't give them license to own a gun themselves. It gives them license to use and possess a gun in the context of hunting or something like that. The gun itself has to be owned by somebody else. And I think this is where, you know, more investigative work and a more. fulsome disclosure publicly is needed. The RSMP also said that there had been guns in the home and they'd been seized by police and then returned.

How would that have played out? Why would guns have been seized and then returned back? Well, I think the guns, I think the indication is that the reason the guns were seized was that there was concern about the possibility of self-harm or there was concern about the possibility of violence. And so the mandate is pretty clear. and that part would have been unproblematic. I think the question is, when they were returned,

what was the kind of process involved there? Because, you know, once that kind of pattern is established, it's very difficult to return to, you know, possession of the guns again. So I think that's what a lot of people are wondering. Again, you talked about sort of trying to find the sensitivity versus the investigative part of what the police, police are doing. I mean, it's difficult to balance those things in a very small community.

How do they go about that without retramatizing people who have been through so much at this point? I think it's such an important question, you know, that when these incidents occur, I think right away the police are driven to kind of convene a press conference. And usually often the purpose is just to, you know, convey to the public that they are in control. You know, but the fact that the incident has occurred in the first place, has created a question about this. And so there's always this kind of push to disclose a lot of information up front to show that they've got the situation under control. But what often happens is because it's piecemeal, it leads to speculation and conjecture. And this is when I think things can really go sideways. I'm just going to talk

about the gun permit incident and the fact that the biological father has come forward and now the father of the brother. You know, one of the things, one of the insinuations or implications about the gun permit was who was the adult, right? And that's where public speculation comes in. And that's where the duty of care of police to the community is to kind of try to keep those people out of harm's way, right? To balance that against the public's and the community's desire to know and to be reassured, right? We only have about 20 seconds left, but you You know, we did hear the police say right off the bat, we may never know the motive. Do you think we'll find out?

Well, I think in these cases, even when there is a kind of clear indication of what the motives were, there's always, I think, the lingering background sentiment that the motive is not the cause, right? People may be motivated, but what actually drives them into action are conspiring kind of precursors, right? that feeling of social alienation. Yeah. Wade Diceman, we have to leave it there for now. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Wade Diceman is a criminologist and associate dean of the faculty of social sciences

at the University of the Fraser Valley. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.