St. Pius X High School shooting

St. Pius X High School shooting
LocationOttawa, Ontario, Canada
Date27 October 1975 (1975-10-27)
c. 2:30 p.m. (ETZ)
Attack type
Weapons
Deaths3 (including the perpetrator)
Injured5
PerpetratorRobert Poulin

On 27 October 1975, a mass shooting took place at St. Pius X High School in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The gunman, Robert Poulin, an 18-year-old St. Pius student, opened fire on his classmates with a shotgun, killing 17-year-old classmate Mark Hough and wounding five others before killing himself with a shotgun blast to the head.[1][2][3]

Earlier that day, Poulin had killed his neighbor, 17-year-old Glebe Collegiate Institute student Kim Rabot after luring her inside his room at the family home.[4] Rabot, originally from Sri Lanka, was an acquaintance of Poulin for three years, with Poulin blaming his "shyness" for never asking her out; Rabot was already in a relationship with another boy by the time of her murder. After handcuffing Rabot to his bed, he raped her before mortally wounding Rabot with a knife. Poulin's mother interrupted the rape when she asked her son to eat lunch with him. Before leaving, Poulin set fire to the house.[5]

Poulin was from a military family and told his parents that he planned to become a pilot within the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was rejected from the officer training program because of his physical condition and psychological immaturity, the former including poor eyesight and a pigeon chest deformity. He instead trained in a government-sponsored militia group.[5]

Poulin had been suicidal for at least three years prior to the attack and was obsessed with sex and pornography, having repeatedly written in his diaries about his desire to experience sex before he died.[6] He was later identified as a suspect in a series of indecent assaults and attempted rapes. The physical description of the assault suspect, who only wore a balaclava, matched Poulin, who wrote he would wear a balaclava if he committed rape. A search of his room found 250 pornographic books and magazines, bondage photographs depiciting women tied to bed posts, four pairs of handcuffs, women's lingerie, an inflatable sex doll, and a vibrator. Also recovered was a binder with "nearly one thousand separate entries", which included various violent fantasies such as killing his parents in a housefire and raping girls he knew at knifepoint, with a list of eighteen girls including Kim Rabot. Other girls on the list reported receiving "obscene phone calls" which stopped after the shooting.[7][8][9]

The 1977 book Rape of a Normal Mind was based on the shooting.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Shooting violence in Canadian schools 1975-2007". The Star. 23 May 2007. Archived from the original on 23 November 2007.
  2. ↑ ""Fr. Bob Bedard: no big car, but he's happy (Companions of the Cross).."". Catholic Insight. 1 July 1997 – via The Free Library.
  3. ↑ "Winnipeg woman who survived Ottawa school shooting reflects on La Loche attack". CBC News. 24 January 2016. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  4. ↑ St. Pius X shooting survivor reflects on Newtown killings
  5. 1 2 Van Brunt, Brian (2014). Harm to Others: The Assessment and Treatment of Dangerousness. ISBN 978-1119026976.
  6. ↑ Langman, Peter F. "Expanding the Sample: Five School Shooters" (PDF). pp. 1–2. Retrieved 18 April 2010.
  7. 1 2 "50 years later, an Ottawa high schooler's violent unravelling still leaves deep scars". CBC. 13 October 2025.
  8. ↑ "Violence at U.S. and Canadian schools". The Toronto Star. 16 April 2007. ISSN 0319-0781.
  9. ↑ Langman, Peter (15 January 2015). School Shooters: Understanding High School, College, and Adult Perpetrators. pp. 7–10. ISBN 978-1442233577.

Cited works and further reading

  • Cawthorne, Nigel; Tibballs, Jeffrey (1994). Killers. Boxtree. pp. 265–270. ISBN 0-7522-0850-0.
  • Cobb, Chris (1977). Rape of a Normal Mind. Paper Jacks. ISBN 978-0-770-10025-4.
  • Mellor, Lee (2013). Rampage: Canadian Mass Murder and Spree Killing. Dundurn. ISBN 978-1-459-70722-1.
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