On the afternoon of 10 February 2026, seventh-grader Maya Gebala was in the library at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in northeastern British Columbia. Relatives later said she and classmates heard chaos and tried to close and lock the library door. The attempt did not keep the attacker out. Maya was shot in the head and neck. She was carried from the building after a classmate saw her finger move. She was airlifted to B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver in extreme critical condition. Doctors spoke of organ donation. The family refused to treat that as the last word.

The attack that day killed eight people besides the 18-year-old perpetrator, Jesse Van Rootselaar, who died by a self-inflicted wound. At the school the dead included education assistant Shannda Aviugana-Durand, 39, and students Abel Mwansa, Kylie Smith, Zoey Benoit and Ticaria Lampert, all 12, and Ezekiel Schofield, 13. The perpetrator had already killed her mother and 11-year-old half-brother at home. Another student, Paige Hoekstra, was shot in the chest and later recovered enough to go home. Maya’s injuries were different: cranial fractures, bleeding, swelling the family was told resembled a stroke, limited predicted movement on one side. She went through multiple neurosurgical operations, a medically induced coma, a ventilator, later an abscess that postponed a skull prosthesis, and months in hospital.

The milestones came slowly. Ventilator pressure was reduced when she began to initiate breaths. She moved more on the left. By mid-June her mother, Cia Edmonds, said responses had “clicked”: yes/no buttons, an iPad app for non-verbal communication, trips off hospital grounds. In September 2026 Edmonds posted video of Maya relearning to say “mom.” David Gebala, her father, and cousin Krysta Hunt had kept a public record of each small gain. A GoFundMe under #MayaStrong raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hockey teams wore her number 14. She had played defence for the U-13 Tumbler Ridge Raptors. The photographs that circulated — a girl in a team hoodie, then a cervical collar, NG tube and one eye swollen shut — are the before and after of a single afternoon in a town of a few thousand.

Trying to lock a door did not stop the shooting. It is still what her family was told she did. Recovery is incomplete and will stay incomplete in ways no headline can tidy. What the record shows is a child who reached for a lock, survived transport that doctors doubted, and months later pressed a button that meant yes.

Sources
Vancouver Sun reports on Maya Gebala’s condition and the library door (13–21 February and 21 March 2026)
CityNews Vancouver updates, including June 2026 communication with a tablet
National Post / Calgary Herald family interviews
Global News interview with Krysta Hunt (11–12 February 2026)
The Globe and Mail and Canadian Press reconstructions of 10 February 2026
Wikipedia summary of the 2026 Tumbler Ridge shooting (victim list and hospital course)