Officers entered the town’s school and found six people dead – a 39-year-old woman who taught at the school and five students, three 12-year-old girls and two boys, 13 and 12. The presumed shooter was also found with what is believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Investigators found two people dead at an address linked to the shooter who were identified as the shooter’s mother and stepbrother, police said.
They were discovered when an unnamed girl who was related to the family went to a neighbour to raise the alarm and they called police. The shooter went to the school after the killings at their home.
About 25 others were treated for injuries at a nearby medical centre.
Police clarified the death toll on Wednesday, saying nine people had been killed including the shooter.
Prime Minister Mark Carney told Parliament some of those wounded were still in the hospital “fighting for their lives”.
- The shooter -
The shooter was named by police as local resident Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, a high school dropout who had been visited several times by police over mental health concerns.
She was “apprehended for assessment and follow up” under the Mental Health Act and taken to the hospital on occasion, authorities said.
Weapons were seized from the residence some years ago, police said, but they were subsequently returned after the lawful owner petitioned to get them back.
Officers said Van Rootselaar has previously held a firearms licence that had expired in 2024, and had no firearms registered to her.
Police identified Van Rootselaar as transgender, saying that she began to transition six years ago and identified as female both “socially and publicly”.
They said she dropped out of school four years ago, and that no suicide note had been located so far.
The address given by police for Van Rootselaar was a neat detached wooden two-storey house with a pickup truck in the driveway.
The location
The district of Tumbler Ridge, 1170km north of Vancouver, has a population of 2700, according to the local authority. Many residents work in the mining, quarrying and hydrocarbon industries.
Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where the shooting took place, has 175 students from grades seven to 12, according to the local government.
Images after the shooting showed students being led out of the school with their hands up, under the watch of armed officers.
Carney said “the investigation is ongoing, and we must allow law enforcement the time and space to do their work accordingly”.
Police said the school and the residence where dead family members of the shooter were found were still locked down while investigators executed search warrants.
Mass shootings in Canada
Other major mass shootings in Canada include a December 6, 1989 attack when a 25-year-old man claiming to be “anti-feminist” burst into a Montreal school and opened fire exclusively on women.
He killed 13 female students and a secretary before taking his own life.
In April 2020, a man disguised as a police officer and driving a fake police car went on a shooting and arson rampage in eastern Nova Scotia province killing 22.
More shootings
While mass killings are less frequent in Canada than in the United States, statistics show a steady increase in violent gun crimes.
Canada recorded 36.9 incidents of firearm-related violent crime per 100,000 people in 2023. That’s 22% higher compared to 2018 and 55% higher than 2013.
- Agence France-Presse
