On February 10, 2026, a mass shooting occurred in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada. On that afternoon, Jesse Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at their home before going to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where she killed six people and injured 27 others before killing herself. Van Rootselaar was a former student of the school.
The incident was the deadliest mass shooting in Canada since the Nova Scotia attacks in 2020 and the deadliest school shooting in Canada since the École Polytechnique massacre in 1989.
Tumbler Ridge is a small mining town with a population of 2,399, according to the 2021 census. Tumbler Ridge Secondary School is a public secondary school operated by School District 59 Peace River South, and it is the designated secondary school for the town's primary school. For the 2025–26 school year, the school had 191 students from grades 7 to 12.
Gun control legislation in Canada was greatly reinforced with the passage of the Firearms Act in 1995, following the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal. After the 2020 Nova Scotia attacks, such restrictions were further strengthened, with the sale, transport, importation or use of certain models of "assault-style" firearms banned via an Order in Council, with the deadline for firearm disposal set at October 30, 2026. The Canadian Firearms Program of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is tasked with enforcing the act.
The attacker's mother and 11-year-old half brother were shot and killed with a shotgun at their home at Fellers Avenue in Tumbler Ridge. Police had already been called to the school when a surviving resident and neighbours alerted them to this attack; the Vancouver Sun reported that this was the 8-year-old half-brother of the shooter.
Van Rootselaar then went to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School with a modified rifle and a long gun and opened fire, first killing a victim in a stairwell. She killed five others in the school's library and fatally shot herself shortly after police arrived. At approximately 2:20 p.m. MST, RCMP received a report of an active shooter at the school, which is approximately 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) from the family home. An alarm in the school instructed students to close the doors for a lockdown. Students then barricaded the doors with tables. A 17-year-old student in the school gym reported hearing "12 shots ring out in quick succession". An Alert Ready emergency alert was released in the region by the RCMP at around 3:15 p.m. MST, asking residents to shelter in place due to the active shooter situation. Other schools in the area were also placed on lockdown. The police emergency alert was cancelled at 6:45 p.m. MST. Premier of British Columbia David Eby said the police had reached the school within two minutes of the initial reports. Gunshots from the attacker continued as the four RCMP officers responded at the scene.
Later on the day of the shooting, School District 59 announced that both schools in Tumbler Ridge would remain closed for the rest of the week.
Six people were found dead inside the school; a seventh was mistakenly reported as deceased en route to the hospital but survived. The dead at the school were identified as a 39-year-old education assistant Shannda Aviugana-Durand, three female students all aged 12, and two male students aged 12 and 13. Two people were found dead at a residence in Tumbler Ridge. RCMP confirmed that they were the perpetrator's mother, Jennifer Strang, and the perpetrator's 11-year-old half brother. Both had been shot before the perpetrator attacked the school.
Twenty-seven other people were treated for injuries, including two with serious injuries. A Shock Trauma Air Rescue Service aircraft was dispatched from Grande Prairie, Alberta. In a press conference, the British Columbia RCMP confirmed that two injured people were airlifted to Vancouver hospitals. One, a 19-year-old woman, was released from the hospital on February 16, while a 12-year-old girl with multiple gunshot wounds to the head and neck was airlifted to British Columbia Children's Hospital in Vancouver, and required several surgeries. One of the injured students sustained a catastrophic brain injury that left her with permanent cognitive and physical disabilities. She was subsequently released from the intensive care unit in April 2026 after her condition stabilized.
Jesse Van Rootselaar (August 4, 2007 – February 10, 2026), also known as Jesse Strang, was identified as the suspected shooter by RCMP deputy commissioner Dwayne McDonald, after initially being described by the RCMP as "a female in a dress with brown hair".
McDonald stated that Van Rootselaar was a trans woman who had dropped out of school about four years prior to the shooting.
According to McDonald, there was no information to suggest that Van Rootselaar had been bullied at school.
Van Rootselaar was born to Justin Van Rootselaar and Jennifer Strang. Ms. Van Rootselaar was estranged from her father, which her father blamed on choices made by her mother. Her father also said that she never used his last name, Van Rootselaar. Instead, she used her mother's last name, Strang.
Ms. Van Rootselaar and her siblings had been the subject of custody disputes between their parents, and they had moved between Newfoundland and Labrador, including the town of Lawn where Jennifer Strang grew up, and parts of Western Canada, including Grande Cache, Alberta and Powell River, British Columbia, multiple times between 2010 and 2015. Jennifer Strang was in the process of divorcing her husband, who was the father of three of her children (including the 11-year-old son killed alongside her) and who resided in Alberta at the time of the attack.
Van Rootselaar's YouTube profile picture featured an anime-style mascot and a rifle set against a pink-and-white-striped background. A TikTok account, which used the same profile image under the username "jessestrangg", featured multiple reposted videos of the transgender mass shooter who killed six people at a Christian school in Nashville in 2023. In a social media post in c. 2022, Van Rootselaar's mother "promoted the teenager's YouTube channel ... noting that her child 'posts about hunting, self-reliance, guns'". The Daily Telegraph reported that videos on the YouTube channel show Van Rootselaar "firing a high-powered Desert Eagle handgun at a shooting range ... carrying out target practice with a tactical 12-gauge shotgun and firing a semi-automatic carbine at targets". A Reddit account linked to the shooter posted a video in 2023 at a firing range.
About five months before the shooting, she created an account on WatchPeopleDie.tv, a web forum dedicated to gore videos and violence that has been frequented by multiple other mass shooters, including Natalie Rupnow, whose profile was visited by Van Rootselaar. Van Rootselaar's posts on the website included multiple photos of firearms, including an SKS rifle and a KRISS Vector gun, and videos of her firing them. Van Rootselaar created a mall shooting simulator game on Roblox, according to the platform's administrators.
Van Rootselaar had previously held a valid minor's licence (12–17), which only allows for temporarily borrowing a non-restricted (ordinary rifle or shotgun) firearm for approved purposes; it had expired in 2024. She was not the owner of any firearms because acquiring and possessing firearms is not allowed with a minor's licence. According to McDonald, Jennifer Strang "had a valid firearms licence but did not have any restricted firearms that would require registration". RCMP confirmed that in a previous police visit in the past two years, "firearms were seized under the Criminal Code", but that "the lawful owner of those firearms petitioned for them to be returned, and they were". A relative told The Globe and Mail that the seized guns had been returned "roughly a month" prior to the shooting.
In June 2025, OpenAI had banned a ChatGPT account belonging to Van Rootselaar due to violent queries. However, administrators had opted not to report the account to authorities at the time. The Wall Street Journal reported that Van Rootselaar's conversations with the chatbot "described scenarios involving gun violence over the course of several days", and that these messages were "flagged by an automated review system". At that time, about a dozen OpenAI employees debated turning the chatlogs over to the law enforcement. A spokeswoman for OpenAI confirmed that the company had banned Van Rootselaar's account. However, the official stated that it determined that her activity did not meet the criteria for reporting to law enforcement.