Mother of critically injured Tumbler Ridge victim feels compassion for shooter’s mother

WARNING: This article contains graphic images and explicit details of a mass shooting event.

For 12-year-old Maya Gebala’s parents, any movement — even a tiny leg twitch — is reason to rejoice. It comes after watching their child intubated and treated by emergency health professionals.

The Grade 7 student was one of the victims shot Tuesday at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School — an attack that left eight people, including six children, dead.

Maya was airlifted to B.C. Children’s Hospital and has been fighting for her life since.

Forty-year-old Cia Edmonds says she feels blessed her child survived, and is urging Canadians to support all the families whose children or loved ones were killed or critically injured.

Posts of Maya’s progress on social media are being met by thousands of comments — people moved by the image of the tween grinning in her hockey helmet, juxtaposed against the devastating reality of her bruised and bandaged face. A GoFundMe has raised thousands for her care.

It is painful for Maya’s parents to see this tenacious hockey player, who taught herself how to walk on stilts, now so motionless.

“She’s way too stubborn to let this…” David Gebala said, as his voice trailed off while sobbing. “She’ll pull through this, I believe that she will.”

He says thousands of well wishes from around the world help, but posts that attack or politicize this tragic massacre, trouble both of them.

He and his former partner are frustrated that some of the posts have attracted vicious, angry comments directed at the mother of the shooter, after she was also shot and killed in the tragedy.

Edmonds says she was friends with the suspect’s mother, Jennifer Strang, and she used to babysit the shooter — 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar — as a child.

Edmonds weeps for all hit by this tragedy, including the perpetrator’s mother.

Edmonds says she watched the single mother, who worked long shifts at a nearby mine, fight to help her child. Edmonds says at one point, Van Rootselaar tried to light a mattress on fire “and burn the house down.” She adds the teen had been hospitalized several times with mental health issues.

“People are trying to politicize what this is about. It’s not about guns. It’s not about transgenderism. It’s about mental health. It’s about a lack of resources,” Edmonds told CBC News.

“She really — I truly believe that in her heart — did everything she could to try to help … I know that she struggled.”

Tuesday began as a normal day for first year high school student Maya. The 12-year-old was excited to get to class to work on a catapult project, and planned to drop by her mom’s tattoo and clothing shop at lunch, but she didn’t show up.

That’s when the call came. The school was locked down.

At first Edmonds says she didn’t panic. But then a friend saw two armed police officers run into the building, so she rushed over.

She found a group of parents parked in the recreation centre parking lot. The father of another student showed her a text message.

“He says, ‘Dad, I’m fine.’ And I said, ‘Ask him how Maya is.’ And then he shows me again, and it says, ‘Maya’s been dragged out, and I believe she’s been shot.’”

Edmonds raced to the town’s health centre and through glass saw medical staff cutting off the girl’s clothing. But the mother was held back, told that the victims hadn’t been identified.

“I said, ‘That’s my baby in there!’”

Both of Maya’s parents are unclear exactly what happened in the school. They’ve heard fellow students rushed to save Maya, after bullets hit her teacher, and then her, in the head.

“There’s a bullet … that went through her earlobe and then through the head and out the back, and then one was stuck in her throat,” said Edmonds.

So far surgeons have warned her that Maya may not recover.

“They had told us there’s nothing that we can do … so lay with her,” she said. “It’s almost been 48 hours and she’s still fighting. She’s so strong.”

Gebala says he’s hopeful after “incredible improvements” — hearing his child cough for the first time, and moving her hand and leg.

He puts an arm around Maya’s mother, as they sit on a bench near the hospital, fighting back tears and finding strength in the waves of international support pouring in.

“I just can’t wait till she opens her eyes, or smiles, or says, ‘Mama.’ I just want her to say mama,” said Edmonds.

“If she said mama one time, just one time.”

If you’re affected by this story, you find mental health support through resources in your province or territory.