30 May, 2017
A second 16-year-old female student remains in hospital.
Police continue to investigate and have not determined what type of drug was consumed.
Both girls attended Power Alternate Secondary School in New Westminster, an alternative school with just eight staff members and 66 students.
Grant and her team are at POWER today and will be there as long as they are needed, Duncan added.
The New Westminster school district says it has put in place a critical incident response plan, which includes having extra counsellors and additional staff to help students cope with the news of the death.
The names of the victims have not been released, and Duncan said he couldn't comment on the incident while the investigation is ongoing.
Meanwhile, the school district calls the death "a bad tragedy".
The district now has a full-time school-based prevention worker who helps students.
"New Westminster is a very small community relative to the rest of the communities in Metro Vancouver and this has impacted the entire community".
The girl, who has not been identified, and another student of the same age, took drugs sold as MDMA - but contained a mixture of unknown drugs.
Police said it's not clear what the drug is. "Drug users who don't feel well are advised to seek medical attention immediately".
"This raises a number of different concerns for us, the first being that there's a lethal drug circulating... and we don't know what that drug is", Sgt. Jeff Scott of New Westminster police said.
