BURST
The B.C. RCMP has confirmed artificial intelligence company OpenAI contacted investigators after the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge last week.
This news comes as the Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI considered alerting Canadian authorities about the violence in teenage shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account. The Journal, which first reported the story, says an employee voiced concerns but they didn’t meet the threshold of a credible or imminent plan for serious physical harm to others.
Van Rootselaar, 18, shot and killed eight people, including children at their school, before dying by suicide. A motive for the shooting rampage remains unclear.
“What I can say is that as part of the investigation, digital and physical evidence is being collected, prioritized, and methodically processed,” Staff Sgt. Kris Clark said in an email Saturday.
“This includes a thorough review of the content on electronic devices, as well as social media and online activities. I can also confirm that (OpenAI) reached out to the RCMP after the incident.”
Although OpenAI did not alert the authorities before the shooting, it did ban Van Rootselaar’s account in June 2025 when it was flagged for being used to promote violence, according to the report.
With no confession left by the shooter, investigators are trying to determine why the Tumbler Ridge shootings happened. The RCMP said investigators are examining circumstances that may have contributed to the shooting, as well as the motive.
Four years ago, Van Rootselaar’s mother, Jennifer Strang, who was killed in the attack, promoted her son’s YouTube channel in a Facebook post, noting that her child “posts about hunting, self-reliance, guns.”
A TikTok account using the same profile image, under the username “jessestrangg,” reposted several videos of 28-year-old Audrey Hale, who in March 2023 shot and killed six students after opening fire at a Christian school in Nashville.
On Jan. 10, five youths — Abel Mwansa, 12; Zoey Benoit, 12, Kylie Smith, 12, Ezekiel Schofield, 13 and Ticaria Lampert, 12 — were found dead in Tumbler Ridge Secondary School along with a 39-year-old educator, Shannda Aviugana-Durand.
Also killed were Emmett Jacobs, 11, and Jennifer Jacobs, 39, the stepbrother and mother of Rootselaar, who police say used two firearms to shoot them at home before going to the school to kill the others.
With Postmedia files