Federal police stepped up security at Parliament House in Canberra after the shooting at the Canadian capital Ottawa.  A gunman shot and mortally wounded a soldier guarding the National War Memorial, before going into Parliament where he was shot and killed by the House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms.

The killer was born Michael Joseph Hall, who later changed his name to Michael Zehaf-Bibeau.  He went from the war memorial to inside the Parliament house, where he engaged cops in a gun battle.  Several MPs are crediting 58-year old Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers with firing the shot that brought down the gunman.  As usually happens in a chaotic situations, there were unconfirmed reports of other possible shooters and locations, but those got knocked down pretty quickly.

The murdered soldier is identified as Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a reservist from Hamilton, Ontario.  Friends say the 24-year old was the father of a young son.  Because he was performing the ceremonial duty of guarding the war memorial, the weapon he carried was not loaded.

Zehaf-Bibeau has a history of drug convictions, and was apparently a recent convert to radical Islam.  Canadian intelligence identified him as a “high risk traveler”, and authorities revoked his passport.

Two days earlier, another self-declared convert to radical Islam rammed his car into two soldiers at a mall outside Montreal.  Police chased down that suspect, 25-year old Martin Couture-Rouleau, killing him in a gun battle.