"It is horrific what has occurred in our province today," Blackmore said, adding there were 13 crime scenes where either deceased or injured people were found.
It is among the deadliest mass killings in Canadian history. The deadliest gun rampage in Canadian history happened in 2020 when a man disguised as a police officer shot people in their homes and set fires across the province of Nova Scotia, killing 22 people. A man used a van to kill 10 pedestrians in Toronto in 2019. But mass killings are less common in Canada than in the United States.
"If in the Regina area, take precautions & consider sheltering in place. Do not leave a secure location. DO NOT APPROACH suspicious persons. Do not pick up hitch hikers. Report suspicious persons, emergencies or info to 9-1-1. Do not disclose police locations," the RCMP said in a message on Twitter.
Doreen Lees, an 89-year grandmother from Weldon, said she and her daughter thought they saw one of the suspects when a car came barreling down her street early in the morning as her daughter was having coffee on her deck. Lees said a man approached them and said he was hurt and needed help.
But Lees said the man took off and ran after her daughter said she would call for help.
"He wouldn't show his face. He had a big jacket over his face. We asked his name and he kind of mumbled his name twice and we still couldn't get it," she said. "He said his face was injured so bad he couldn't show it."
She said the man was by himself and "kind of a little wobbly."
"I followed him a little ways to see if he was going to be OK. My daughter said 'Don't follow him, get back here.'"
Deadly mass stabbings are more rare than mass shootings but have happened around the world. In 2014, 29 people were slashed and stabbed to death at a train station in China's southwestern city of Kunming. In 2016, a mass stabbing at a facility for the mentally disabled in Sagamihara, Japan, left 19 people dead. A year later, three men killed eight people in a vehicle and stabbing attack at London Bridge.
A series of stabbings at an Indigenous community and at another town nearby in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan has left 10 people dead and 15 wounded, Canadian police say as they search for two suspects.
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