Canadian police scaled up the death toll, yesterday, following the weekend’s bloody mass shooting in eastern Canada. Here, a 51-year-old dental technician was behind the worst mass shooting in Canada’s modern history.

Among the many victims is a 17-year-old, three married couples, a pregnant nurse and a Canadian police officer, the BBC reported.

The offender is believed to have struck at 16 different crime scenes and was first located and shot dead by police officers after 14 nerve-wracking hours. The Canadian authorities are still in the process of clarifying the process.

The investigation has not been made any easier by the fact that more fires were started at the crime scenes. According to police, the perpetrator knew some of the victims, but is still unwittingly left over the central question: why did he do it?

While authorities do not yet know what the perpetrator’s motive was, they point out that the mass shooting was probably not spontaneous. The offender was wearing a police uniform which, according to the police, was either genuine or “a good copy”. At the same time, he was driving around in a car that had been converted into an identical replica of a police car, which hampered the apprehension, Canadian police said.

The mass shooting began on Saturday evening in the populated area of Portapique in Nova Scotia. Police received several reports of gunshots. On arrival, several gunshot victims were found, as well as buildings and cars that had been set on fire, according to the BBC.

Later, victims were found at several different crime scenes in the Novia Scotia region. According to the police, the investigation is “detailed” and “complex”. They are still investigating whether the perpetrator was helped by others during the mass shooting, the BBC reports. Canadian media The Globe and Mail reports that police has recently received criticism for failing to issue a warning to the region’s residents during the long hours when the perpetrator was at large. Instead, updates were made on the local police’s Twitter account.