VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — The families of the victims of the mass shooting in a remote Canadian town grappled with unrelenting grief Thursday as details emerged about those killed in the country's deadliest mass shooting in years.

Authorities said the 18-year-old shooter killed her 39-year-old mother, Jennifer Jacobs, and 11-year-old stepbrother, Emmett Jacobs, in their northern British Columbia home on Tuesday before heading to the nearby Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and opening fire, killing five children and a teacher before killing herself.

The motive remains unclear.

Among the dead was 12-year-old student Kylie Smith, whose family remembered her as "the light in our family.”

“She loved her family, friends, and going to school," Kylie's family said in a statement. “She was a talented artist and had dreams of going to art school in the big city of Toronto. Rest in paradise, sweet girl, our family will never be the same without you.”

Kylie's father tearfully recounted the desperate hours spent trying to learn what happened to her, only to find out from an older girl, not the authorities.

Lance Younge told CTV News on Wednesday that his son Ethan texted “I love you” shortly after 3 p.m. Tuesday and then called a short time later to say he was hiding in a utility room at his school in the small mountain community of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, but that he didn't know where his sister Kylie was.

The family would find out hours later that Kylie was among the dead.

While looking for Kylie, Younge said he walked around the local recreation center where students were reuniting with their families for about six hours, but that police wouldn't tell him anything.

“I went home not knowing where my daughter was until a high school kid ... came here and told us her story about trying to save my daughter’s life," he said. "The police didn’t tell us anything. We had to find out through the community and through kids and rumors in the stands.”

Authorities on Thursday identified the other victims as Abel Mwansa, Zoey Benoit and Ticaria Lampert, all age 12, as well as 13-year-old Ezekiel Schofield and teacher Shannda Aviugana-Durand, 39.

In a statement, Zoey's family described her as “resilient, vibrant, smart, caring and the strongest little girl you could meet."

A need for mental health services

Trent Ernst, publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines, a biweekly newspaper in the town, said he finds himself “randomly breaking down and weeping at inopportune times, usually when talking to people about what is happening.”

He said he knows Maya Gebala, 12, and Paige Hoekstra, 19, who were wounded and hospitalized in Vancouver.

He said he spoke with Maya at a recent winter carnival in town, describing her as “funky and vivacious” and “full of life.”

Ernst said one of the biggest frustrations in the community is the lack of medical support.

“The majority of people that I’ve talked to are sad more at the fact that Tumbler Ridge doesn’t have the level of support for mental health and health services in general," he said. “If this had happened three hours later, our clinic would have been closed and there would be no emergency room there," he said, noting that it likely would have reopened under such exceptional circumstances.

In particular, Ernst said there's a severe lack of mental health services in the Canadian Rockies town, which has roughly 2,700 residents and is more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) northeast of Vancouver, near the provincial border with Alberta.

“Right now, there are five mental health nurses in town. But this is the exception, and it’s an exceptional situation. There are times where we’ll go months, if not years, without having anybody in mental health services in town,” he said.

A community grieves

Mourners braved frigid cold Wednesday night to honor the victims, with Mayor Darryl Krakowka telling them, “It’s OK to cry.”

Krakowka described the town as “one big family,” and encouraged people to reach out and support each other, especially the families of those who died in the attack. The community must support victims’ families “forever,” not only in the days and weeks to come, he said.

Jesse Van Rootselaar, whom investigators identified as the shooter, had a history of police visits to her home to check on her mental health, authorities said.

“There is no information at this point that anyone was specifically targeted,” said Dwayne McDonald, deputy commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Police recovered a long gun and a modified handgun. McDonald said officers arrived at the school two minutes after the initial call and that shots were fired in their direction when they showed up.

“Parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers in Tumbler Ridge will wake up without someone they love. The nation mourns with you, and Canada stands by you,” an emotional Prime Minister Mark Carney said Wednesday as he arrived in Parliament.

Carney, who said flags at government buildings will be flown at half-staff for seven days, planned to visit Tumbler Ridge on Friday.

Deadliest rampage since 2020

The attack was Canada’s deadliest since 2020, when a gunman in Nova Scotia killed 13 people and set fires that left another nine dead.

Peter Schofield, whose 13-year-old grandson Ezekiel Schofield was killed, shared his grief in a Facebook post, saying: “Everything feels so surreal. The tears just keep flowing."

Twenty-five people were also injured in the attack. Not all of them were shot, but among the shooting victims was 12-year-old Maya Gebala, who had bullet wounds to the head and neck.

“We were warned that the damage to her brain was too much for her to endure, and she wouldn’t make the night,” her mother, Cia Edmonds, posted on social media late Wednesday.

“Today started as any other. Now, however, my 12 year old daughter is fighting for her life,” Edmonds wrote.

School shootings are rare in Canada, which has strict gun-control laws. The government has responded to previous mass shootings with gun-control measures, including a recently broadened ban on all guns it considers assault weapons.

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Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press reporter R.J. Rico in Atlanta contributed.