Dawson College shooting survivor becomes Montreal police officer, 20 years on

James Santos witnessed his friend Anastasia De Sousa's death in the 2006 Dawson College shooting. Two decades later, he serves as an SPVM officer.

From cafeteria to badge: James Santos reflects on 20 years since Dawson College shooting

James Santos was 17 years old and having lunch with his friend Anastasia De Sousa when a gunman walked into Dawson College and opened fire. Twenty years later, Santos is a Montreal police officer — working for the force he says gave him a second chance at life. cbc.ca reports on his account of that day and the long road that followed.

Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 13, 2006 shooting, in which a gunman entered the Montreal college and killed De Sousa, then 18, and injured 19 others.

'One of the first shots was directed to my friend'

Santos and De Sousa had found a table near the cafeteria entrance that day. They were talking about their weekend when Santos saw the shooter walk in.

"We were talking about our weekend and what we did and we had laughs — and then, all of a sudden, I see the shooter walk in," Santos told The Canadian Press.

When he recognized the weapon as real, Santos dove behind chairs. De Sousa, her back to the entrance, could not see the shooter and stood up. "She turned around facing the shooter and basically one of the first shots was directed to my friend," Santos recalled.

Believing she had fainted, Santos crawled to her side. "That's when I realized she got hit by one of the rounds near the abdomen. So I tried to console her, tell her that I was next to her and that everything will be alright."

Acting as a human shield

The shooter then turned his attention to Santos and ordered him to stand in front of him — effectively as a human shield. Santos complied. "I didn't want to anger him because I believed that Anastasia was still there, and I also had other friends that were trapped," he said.

Santos tried to talk the gunman down and accepted, in that moment, that he might not survive. "I just didn't want to take other students with me," he said.

To buy time, Santos fed the shooter false information about the school's layout — telling him one corridor led to a janitor's closet, another led nowhere. When the gunman asked how De Sousa was doing, Santos, still hoping she was alive, asked the shooter to let him get her help.

The gunman said nothing. He loaded his magazine, walked over to De Sousa and fired all 12 rounds. Then he returned to Santos. "Well, now you have nothing to worry about," the shooter said.

Santos froze. When the gunman later held another student at gunpoint, Santos snapped — shouting at him to stop. "I think I had enough with everything. Enough with the gunshots, the blood, the screaming of the students, just all of it," Santos said. "The shooter didn't say anything, he just laughed."

That student was spared. Moments later, police shot the gunman in the leg. Santos braced for retaliation. Instead, the shooter killed himself.

Santos ran. The entire ordeal felt like hours. "I found out a little later on that it was a dozen minutes that passed by," he said.

Star of Courage, then years of recovery

In 2008, then-Governor General Michaëlle Jean awarded Santos the Star of Courage for his actions during the shooting.

But the path forward was not straightforward. Santos experienced vivid nightmares and panic attacks. He knew he would need to address his trauma before he could pursue a career in law enforcement. He turned to therapy and set incremental goals — working up, for example, to watching films with heavy gunfire without being overwhelmed.

He then enlisted in the army. Training brought its own challenges. "The smell of gunpowder would bring me right back to the event of Dawson," Santos said. After roughly a decade in the military, he entered the police academy, spent a year working in a town outside Montreal, and joined the Montreal police — the SPVM — in 2018.

"I wanted to give back to the community that gave me another chance, right? The police [officers] gave me another chance at life."

'I'm looking at it as a third person'

Two decades on, Santos speaks about the shooting with composure, his voice steady throughout. "I have all the details in my mind. I recall everything, but I don't put myself into it. I'm looking at it as a third person," he said.

That detachment was hard-won. "Initially, saying it the first couple of times was extremely, extremely, extremely hard. There's really no words to place it, just because you pretty much relive every second of it," he said.

Small details still surface. De Sousa had wanted to go out for lunch that day; Santos chose the cafeteria. She sat with her back to the door. "What if I had given her the [other] chair?" Santos asked himself for years, caught in what he described as a spiral of survivor's guilt. "It just goes down that spiral that it's extremely hard to get out because you could think of anything, but it'll never change what actually happened."

Ceremony at Dawson, call for gun control

Dawson College held a commemorative ceremony on Friday in the school's Peace Garden, bringing together De Sousa's family, survivors and current students. Those present remembered De Sousa as cheerful and resilient.

During the ceremony, De Sousa's mother, Louise De Sousa, called on the federal government to strengthen gun control legislation.

Santos had considered a career in law enforcement even before 2006. The events of that September day, he said, only deepened that intention. "I wanted to give back to the community that gave me another chance."

Source: Google News CA — Crime (EN)