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2007 Winners - News (1st place)
'I thought I was going to die'
Josh Perl relives getting shot through the arm while hiding behind cafeteria tables five metres away from Kimveer Gill's gun.
By Giuseppe Valiante
Link (Concordia University)
Josh Perl was already having a bad day. Three weeks into school and he hadn't bought his textbooks yet. He hadn't had a bite to eat all day and was in the “Italian” cafeteria when he heard a loud noise.
“I thought it was a fire-cracker, a prank,” he recalled, as everybody in the cafeteria hit the floor. “I remember thinking to myself, 'I need this right now like I need a hole in the head.'”
Sitting on his bed in his Cote-St-Luc bedroom, he spoke slowly, his eyes glassy as his words brought him right back into shooter Kimveer Gill's bullet path.
He said he saw people starting to hide and move out of the area.
“I thought maybe it was an anti-Semitic attack, I [hid] my chain,” he said touching the silver Star of David hanging from his neck over his cotton tank top.
He said he saw a guy by the vending machines, kneeling, using a table to aim his gun, spraying the college atrium with bullets.
Perl remembers thinking, “fuck, this is a gang war, this is a drug deal. People are running the hell out of there, people are getting shot.”
Perl started to slither like a snake towards the exit, when a piece of glass flew right by his eyes and shattered on a table next to him.
“Pieces of glass were hitting my neck and my arms,” he said pointing to a diamond-shaped piece of missing skin over his right wrist.
Perl said the shooter stayed in the corner by the machines and never left. He saw his friend who tore his hamstring earlier in the week at rugby practice crawling, trying to get to safety.
All of a sudden, Perl noticed that he was one of the only people left in the cafeteria.
“I look, and there was just me, [the shooter] and one girl. That's all I could see from the floor.”
Perl was on the edge of his bed as he explained how he made his way over to the girl, they were both barely five metres away from Gill.
Perl started throwing tables and bags in front of them to protect themselves from the gunfire.
“I would peak at [Gill] but he never saw me for a second,” Perl said, thankful for the dark clothes he was wearing for making him difficult to spot. The girl, on the other hand was wearing light jeans and a bright top.
“I'm sure [Gill] knew where she was, she kept saying 'What do we do? What the hell do we do?' I told her to stay down, she was pressing her head down against me.”
“[Gill] was shooting at the ceilings, the windows, the pizza place, the hallways… shooting in all directions.”
Perl said Gill was acting like he was playing a game. Periodically hiding behind the vending machines, he'd walk around, laugh, re-load.
“I can't remember if he was wearing a mask, I didn't want to look him in the face, I was scared of him,” he said, “I was looking most of the time at his gun.”
What happened next shocked Perl even more than the semiautomatic showering Dawson's atrium with shells.
He saw a police officer run in from the entrance.
“Man you should have seen this cop, he was beautiful, man, this guy was like a hero, he runs in like a movie.” Perl stands up, looks at himself in his dresser mirror and puts his hands together in the form of a gun, mimicking the cop, pointing straight ahead.
“I tell [the girl] 'we'll be fine, I see a cop, he's gonna take him down.'”
Perl said he peered over the table he was using as cover and saw Gill shooting at the ceiling.
“[The cop] was in perfect position,” he said, “the cop had all the time in the world to take the shot.”
Perl said the police officer screamed at Gill twice to drop his weapon.
“[Gill] looks at him, starts laughing, points his beretta at him and says 'fuck you.'”
Perl said the cop then ran out of the atrium.
“I look at him do this, and I say 'oh my fucking God… and she goes 'what?'”
“[Gill] starts saying 'get the fuck back, get the fuck back,” Perl thinks Gill might have been talking to the girl next to him.
“He opens fire, and starts spraying us. She is screaming, bullets are flying, pieces of table start flying past my head. I see a bunch of her blood hit me in the face, I see a bullet fly into her leg. She goes, 'ahh Fuck, I can't feel my legs.' I'm covering her face with this red bag on the floor.”
Perl said he tried to pull the girl closer to him to try and shield her. But as he raissed his left arm in the air to grab her, a bullet passed through him.
The bullet entered his left tricep and exited through the top of his upper arm.
“Right away my whole hand numbs—there is no pain, there is a lot of blood, all over my jeans right away. My eyes dim, the room starts turning red, I turn over and lie on my back and I look at [Gill.]”
Perl said he thought he was going to die right there.
“I look at the girl, she is unconscious, I thought she was dead.”
Perl saw an opportunity. The shooter was loading his gun, and having thought the girl was dead, he got up and ran to the back of the atrium behind a pizza stand. There he said, were some of his Royal West Academy high school friends. A girl had been shot in the knee, she was crying next to her boyfriend.
One of the cafeteria workers gave him a belt, wrapped it around his arm, putting pressure on his bicep.
Perl said they were all sitting ducks.
“If [Gill] wanted to he could have gone behind the wall and killed everybody there.”
Perl said what was probably only three minutes lasted “an eternity.”
And then it was over.
He heard people say, “It's over, he's out.”
He walked out from behind the wall and Gill-as well as the girl were no longer there.
Perl saw Gill's body as he walked outside.
“His face exploded, he's all finished,” he said.
After getting into an ambulance, Perl said he was finally able to reach his father who had been calling his cell for some time.
“I was so relieved,” Perl's father said, who taught math at Dawson for 30 years and retired two weeks ago. “Two angels saved him, their names were Samuel and Yehiel. Samuel is my father may he rest in peace, and Yehiel is my wife's father who died last Christmas day.”
He was brought to Jean Talon hospital and had surgery that night, returning home Thursday afternoon.
His arm is bandaged and he said doctors will re-evaluate his condition in a week.
The girl that was with Perl did not die. Her present condition is not known.
Perl said he badly wants to meet the stranger he tried to protect.
“I wanna see how she feels about it, she might think I'm the reason why she got shot, she trusted my judgement.”
When it comes to returning to the scene less than a week after the incident, Perl said he needs to go back to Dawson.
“I need to go back just to be there,” he said, “this killer, he was a man with no social power. If no one goes back to school, especially the victims, then I think that he's won. Bullshit. Go back to school.”
