Eight people are dead in the small community of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, after an 18-year-old former student opened fire at a local residence and then at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School on Tuesday afternoon. The shooter, identified by RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald on Wednesday as Jesse Van Rootselaar, killed his mother, his 11-year-old stepbrother, and six people inside the school before turning the gun on himself.
Van Rootselaar was born male and began transitioning to female approximately six years ago. An initial emergency alert described the active shooter as a "female in a dress." A police superintendent later referred to Van Rootselaar as a "gunperson" during a press briefing.
Approximately 25 others were wounded. Most of the school victims were found in the library. One was found in a stairwell. Among the dead: a 39-year-old female teacher, three 12-year-old female students, one 12-year-old male student, and one 13-year-old male student. Their identities have not been released.
This was not a case where nobody saw anything coming. The New York Post reported that according to McDonald, police had visited the Van Rootselaar family home on multiple occasions over the last several years due to concerns about the shooter's mental health. Van Rootselaar was taken into custody for assessment under British Columbia's Mental Health Act on more than one occasion.
Two years ago, firearms were seized from the home. The lawful owner — whom McDonald did not name — petitioned to have them returned. And got them back.
Two firearms were recovered at the school: one long gun and one modified handgun. Whether these were the same weapons previously seized and returned is, according to authorities, "not immediately clear." How Van Rootselaar gained access to the school building during school hours is also unknown. He had dropped out approximately four years ago. Tumbler Ridge Secondary serves grades 7 through 12 and has a student body of roughly 160. Around 100 students were evacuated to safety after being barricaded in classrooms for more than two hours.
Reports of the shooting reached the RCMP at approximately 1:20 p.m. local time. The emergency public alert wasn't canceled until 5:45 p.m.
When asked whether he believed there was any correlation between Van Rootselaar identifying as transgender and the shooting, McDonald said it was:
"Too early to say."
It's always too early to say. And then the conversation moves on, and the question is never revisited — not because the evidence doesn't warrant it, but because the cultural gatekeepers have decided the question itself is impermissible.
The Tumbler Ridge massacre is the latest in a series of mass shootings carried out by individuals who identify as transgender:
Pointing this out is not an accusation that transgender identity causes violence. The overwhelming majority of transgender-identifying people will never harm anyone. But the refusal to even examine the intersection of gender dysphoria, severe mental illness, and mass violence is not compassion — it's cowardice dressed up as sensitivity. When a pattern recurs, adults investigate it. They don't close their eyes and call it kindness.
Van Rootselaar's mother, 39-year-old Jennifer Strang, was among his first victims. She was killed at the family residence alongside her 11-year-old son, Van Rootselaar's stepbrother.
Strang had been a vocal advocate for her child's transition. In July 2024, she posted a trans-inclusive Pride flag on Instagram with the message:
"I really hope the hate I see online is just bored old people and not true hatred. Do better and educate yourself before spewing bulls–t online."
She added:
"Do you have any idea how many kids are killing themselves over this kind of hate?"
She described herself as a "conservative-leaning libertarian" and used the hashtag #ProtectTransKids. In August 2021, Van Rootselaar's grandmother posted a birthday message on Facebook — roughly two years into the transition — celebrating his 14th birthday:
"Happy 14th birthday to our grandson Jesse !! Love you always !! XOXO"
There is something unbearable about a mother who did everything the modern therapeutic consensus told her to do — affirm, support, protect — and was killed by the child she championed. This isn't a point to score. It's a tragedy to sit with. But it is also, inescapably, a data point that challenges the claim that affirmation alone is sufficient treatment for deeply troubled young people.
Van Rootselaar was repeatedly flagged for mental health crises. He was assessed under the Mental Health Act multiple times. He dropped out of school at roughly 14 years old. Firearms were in the home. Every institutional tripwire that was supposed to prevent exactly this outcome failed — not because the signs weren't there, but because the systems meant to act on them didn't.
Only two mass shootings in Canadian history have claimed more victims — the 1989 Montreal massacre at École Polytechnique, which killed 14 women, and the 2020 Nova Scotia attacks, which killed 22 people across 16 locations. Tumbler Ridge now joins that list. A school of 160 students in a rural community just absorbed a body count that would dominate American headlines for weeks.
The Canadian flag flew at half-staff at Parliament on Wednesday. Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke to the media in Ottawa. No specific policy responses or statements were quoted.
Canada's gun control regime is already among the most restrictive in the Western world. Firearms were seized from this home. The system worked exactly as designed — and then reversed itself when the legal owner asked. The weapons came back. Eight people are dead.
The uncomfortable truth is that no regulatory framework can substitute for institutional courage. The Mental Health Act assessments didn't hold Van Rootselaar. The firearms seizure didn't stick. The school, which he hadn't attended in four years, apparently had no mechanism to stop a former student from entering during school hours. Every checkpoint existed on paper. None of them held in practice.
The debate that follows this massacre will be predictable. Calls for stricter gun laws in a country that already has strict gun laws. Demands to avoid "politicizing" the shooter's transgender identity — demands that would never be made if the shooter's ideology pointed rightward. And a quiet burial of the mental health failures that let a known, repeatedly flagged individual walk into a school with two firearms.
A 39-year-old teacher is dead. Four children aged 12 and 13 are dead. A mother and her 11-year-old son are dead. The system knew Jesse Van Rootselaar was in crisis. It was known for years.
Knowing wasn't enough. It never is, when no one is willing to act on what they know.
