TUMBLER RIDGE — The person behind one of British Columbia’s worst mass killings has been identified as an 18-year-old female dropout who killed family members at home, then gunned down random students at a school before firing on police and killing herself as officers closed in.
RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald identified the shooter as Jesse Van Rootselaar, saying she was assigned male at birth but started transitioning six years ago and had quit school four years earlier.
His comments came Wednesday as tributes and condolences poured in from around the world a day after the shootings in the remote community of Tumbler Ridge, in northeastern B.C.
In Tumbler Ridge, the 2,700 residents of this former coal mining boom town on a boreal lip of the Rockies gazed at a school behind barricades and sealed in yellow police tape. They grappled with a day that began normally but ended with overwhelmed parents rushing to the community centre hoping to find their children alive.
“This is a deeply distressing incident where nine individuals have senselessly lost their lives,” McDonald said.
“We do believe the suspect acted alone.”
He said the tragedy began Tuesday when Van Rootselaar killed her mother and stepbrother at their home before heading to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.
There, she opened fire on students and staff alike. A 39-year-old female teacher, three girls aged 12 and two boys aged 12 and 13 were killed, apparently at random. One body was found in the stairwell. Others were in the library.
McDonald said police got the call at 1:20 p.m. of an active shooter. Within minutes they were at the school and had to duck from gunfire.
About 100 students were hustled out. Video taken at the time shows them rushing out in T-shirts, hands up and speed walking across the parking lot amid mounds of snow as alarms blared and a helicopter clattered overhead.
Two females were airlifted to hospital in serious condition. One is 12 and the other 19.
When police entered the school they found Van Rootselaar dead, presumably by her own hand.
McDonald said it didn’t appear Van Rootselaar knew the victims.
Afterward, police found the bodies of her mother, 39, and 11-year-old stepbrother in the family home.
Police had originally listed the death toll at 10, but McDonald updated it to nine, saying one of those thought to have succumbed to their injuries on the way to hospital was still alive.
McDonald said two guns were recovered by officers, a “long gun and a modified handgun.” He said officers were still investigating the weapons to determine who owned them and whether they were legal.
McDonald said Van Rootselaar previously had a gun licence but it expired in 2024 and she no longer had guns registered to her.
Police, he said, had a long history of involvement with Van Rootselaar.
He said that firearms had previously been seized at her home under the Criminal Code, but that they were later returned to “the lawful owner” after the owner petitioned for them to be given back. McDonald didn’t specify who the lawful owner was or if the guns had been seized from Van Rootselaar.
He said she had previously been apprehended under the provincial mental health act and hospitalized “in some circumstances.”
He said the last time police had attended the home was in the spring of last year. McDonald didn’t provide details on what had happened, but said the call was in line with past instances and concerns for Van Rootselaar’s mental health.
As news of the deaths spread, condolences for Tumbler Ridge poured in from across the province and country, from as far away as Europe, Asia, the Olympic Games in Italy and war-torn Ukraine.
In Ottawa, Prime Minister Mark Carney ordered flags lowered to half-mast on government buildings and the Peace Tower for seven days. “Parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, are waking up this morning, without one of their loved ones. It is a difficult time. Canada is grieving, grieving with you,” the prime minister said.
Expressions of sympathy also came from King Charles, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In Canada, government events were cancelled from coast to coast to coast, including Thursday’s throne speech to open the B.C. legislature. Thursday will be an official day of mourning in the province.
Back in Tumbler Ridge, the B.C. and Canadian flags were also at half mast at the town hall, a short distance from the school.
Local pastor Gerald Krauss, with the New Life Assembly church said Wednesday that when he got the alert of the active shooter alert on phone he left his church and went straight to the community centre.
He comforted surviving students, and later parents who began congregating. Krauss didn’t return home until 4 a.m.
“It’s devastating,” he said in an interview.
“There are children that are church children. There are children that are hockey children. Children that are basketball children. People are from everywhere in our town, but they all belong to our community and everyone knows everyone.”
For parents, it was a trip never to be imagined but impossible to refuse.
“All of the parents came to the community centre looking for their children,” Krauss said.
“Some found their children.
“And some did not.”
— With files by Nono Shen in Vancouver and Wolfgang Depner in Victoria
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 11, 2026.
Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press
