MONTREAL -- Scores of panicked teenagers fled into the streets of downtown Montreal after the shooting began. Some had clothes stained with blood; others cried, clung to each other and clutched their backpacks. Many held their hands above their heads to show police they were not carrying a weapon.

The attacker's bloody body, covered in a yellow sheet, lay next to a police cruiser near an entrance to a building at Dawson College.

"I was terrified. The guy was shooting at people randomly. He didn't care, he was just shooting at everybody," said student Devansh Smri Vastava. "There were cops firing. It was so crazy."

A man in a black trench coat and a mohawk haircut opened fire Wednesday at the Montreal college, slaying a young woman and wounding at least 19 other people before police shot and killed him, witnesses and authorities said.

Police dismissed suggestions that terrorism played a role in the lunch-hour attack at Dawson.

Witnesses said the attacker started firing outside the college before walking in the front door. Much of the shooting was in the second-floor cafeteria, where students dropped to the floor and lay in terror. At times the gunman hid behind vending machines before emerging to take aim -- at one point at a teenager who tried to photograph him with his cell phone. Teachers ran through the halls, telling everyone to get out of the building.

Police rushed to the scene, hiding behind a wall as they exchanged fire with the gunman, whose back was against a vending machine, said student Andrea Barone, who was in the cafeteria. He said the officers proceeded cautiously because many students were trapped around the assailant, who yelled "Get back! Get back!" every time an officer tried to move closer.

Eventually, Barone said, the gunman went down in hail of gunfire.