Twenty years after Dawson College shooting, mother speaks of holding on to memories and moving forward

Louise De Sousa still speaks to her daughter every day, twenty years after Anastasia was killed in the Dawson College shooting on September 13, 2006.

"You know, you learn to adapt with it," Louise De Sousa said Montreal. "She's not here, but I'm constantly speaking with her. And I'm always telling her to watch over us."

On September 13, 2006, Kimveer Singh Gill opened fire at Dawson College in Montreal with a semi-automatic rifle and handgun, killing Anastasia De Sousa, 18, in the cafeteria and injuring 19 others before turning a gun on himself after being wounded by police.

Louise De Sousa was on her lunch break when coworkers who had worked with Anastasia that summer told her there had been a shooting at the college. Repeated calls to Anastasia went unanswered. When a coworker suggested many victims were being taken to Montreal General Hospital, Louise rushed there hoping to find her daughter. She spent hours searching for answers in the chaos before finally getting confirmation at 9 p.m. that Anastasia had been killed.

"Our life broke completely," Louise De Sousa said. "My heart shattered, the whole family."

Memories of Anastasia sustain her: "She had this contagious laugh that when she started a laugh, even if you didn't want a laugh, you would laugh. She really had you going."

In the years following the shooting, Louise De Sousa and her husband made a conscious decision to keep moving forward for the sake of their two other children, though the pain of losing Anastasia has never disappeared.

"I miss her tremendously," she said. "That's for sure. I always say it's not fair what happened, but for some reason, there's a reason why it happened. And I hate saying that there's a reason, but I think that's my only way to accept it, to move on. But it's hard going to events, or even our own family events, and she's not around, or it should have been her doing things. It's always the 'what if.'"