What We Know about the Online Life of the Tumbler Ridge Shooter

[Editor’s note: This story contains discussion of mental illness, suicidal thoughts, a mass shooting and an online platform for watching violent videos.]

An extremism expert says Tumbler Ridge school shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar had an account on a platform that features violent videos and talked about being “addicted” to the disturbing content.

Van Rootselaar also talked about struggling with severe mental illness, suicidal thoughts, feeling isolated and turning to online communities for help, said Steven Rai, a senior analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The ISD is an international organization that analyzes and counters violent threats, hostile influence operations and extremism “of all ideological forms.”

Police believe Van Rootselaar, 18, was the sole shooter Tuesday at a home and a high school in Tumbler Ridge. RCMP say Van Rootselaar shot and killed her mother and brother at their family home, then killed five 12- and 13-year-old students and a teacher at the school before killing herself as police entered the school. Two other students were injured; one is still fighting to recover in hospital after being shot in the head.

Rai told The Tyee he and his team have identified several social media accounts belonging to Van Rootselaar, including accounts on Reddit, YouTube and Roblox, an online game platform.

Some of the accounts date back to 2019 when Van Rootselaar would have been around 12. Rai said Van Rootselaar talked about experiencing severe mental illness and feeling isolated. She talked about struggling with depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and autism and experiencing a frightening bout of psychosis brought on by taking psychedelic mushrooms.

Van Rootselaar experimented with a wide variety of drugs to manage some of these mental health symptoms, with mixed success, Rai said.

RCMP have said that police attended Van Rootselaar’s home multiple times over “the past several years” and she had previously been apprehended under the Mental Health Act.

Rai also found that Van Rootselaar had an account on a website that allows people to watch extremely violent and gory videos. The site has been associated with two other school shootings, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a U.S.-based organization that tracks antisemitism and other forms of hate.

The league describes the website as “a forum where users can post and view real images and videos of violence, including murders, torture, rape, executions, beheadings, suicides, dismemberments, accidents and animal killings.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow and Solomon Henderson had also created accounts on this website several months before they committed separate school shootings. Rupnow shot and killed two people and injured six at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, in December 2024, while Henderson killed one person and injured another at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee, before taking his own life.

Rai urged caution when interpreting users’ interest in the website, saying that having an account on the site does not mean someone will commit a violent act in the future.

“While we don’t have a substantial base of research to draw from, my sense, having monitored these communities, is that most of the members of these sites don’t support violence, even if they enjoy viewing the content,” he told The Tyee in a followup email.

“That said, there are very legitimate concerns over how this type of violent material can desensitize viewers over time, leading them to seek more extreme content and engage in riskier behaviours.”

In comments on the website’s forums, Rai said, Van Rootselaar talked about watching the violent and gory footage “as almost an addiction, like [she] had this sort of obsessive and compulsive draw to it.”

In one comment “[she] even openly admitted that [she wasn't] sure that consuming all of the gore content was having a positive or negative effect on [her] mental health.”

Using her Roblox account, Van Rootselaar created a game that simulated a mass shooting in a mall, 404 Media has reported. Roblox is a video game platform popular with children and youth that’s been the focus of safety concerns for exposing children to disturbing content and inappropriate interactions with adults.

Rai said other social posts showed that Van Rootselaar had a lot of interest in guns and hunting and access to various firearms. She was also passionate about gun rights.

In a press conference Friday, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald described Van Rootselaar’s behaviour during the shooting as “hunting” through the school, firing on anyone she came in contact with rather than targeting specific people.

Van Rootselaar’s motive is still not clear, Rai said, but the combination of suicidal thoughts with an interest in and access to guns “right away triggers concern for me as somebody who researches extremists and all different kinds of violent actors.”

An X account with white supremacist posts and neo-Nazi imagery that was initially thought to be Van Rootselaar’s was later revealed to be a hoax.

Rai said there is currently no evidence that Van Rootselaar had engaged with so-called “nihilistic violence” online groups, a growing form of radicalization where decentralized groups of people online celebrate violent acts with no clear ideological focus. The phenomenon has been linked to at least four school shooters, according to ISD, including Rupnow.

While right-wing media figures in Canada have repeatedly claimed that Van Rootselaar’s transgender identity led to the mass shooting, Rai said there’s no indication that played a part in the horrific acts of violence.

“I think it's unfortunate when any tragedy like this happens, whether it's a school shooting or a mass casualty attack, that people latch on to the most visible characteristics of a perpetrator of these tragedies,” Rai said.

“Having examined the shooter's online footprints, there's just absolutely no reason to believe that their transgender identity had anything to do with this attack.”

Rai said policymakers, community leaders, educators and parents can take steps to prevent this kind of violence.

“There's a lot we can do to prevent violence beyond just having the police go and investigate and lock up the bad people,” Rai said. “Investing in community cohesion, mental health support, training people in schools who deal with children and young people to watch out for certain warning signs that something might be going wrong.

“These are all things that we know from research are really integral to preventing violence from happening.”