Court documents released following a legal effort by CBC and other media organizations reveal that OpenAI conducted an internal review of a ChatGPT account belonging to 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar in June 2025, roughly eight months before the Feb. 10, 2026 shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.
According to the RCMP records, the review was triggered after a conversation on the account “discussed matters that could be related to the school shooting.”
OpenAI subsequently banned the account but did not notify police, the documents state.
RCMP were only notified by the FBI on Feb. 15, five days after the massacre, that OpenAI had identified two ChatGPT accounts believed to have been used by Van Rootselaar.
The newly released documents also reveal Van Rootselaar had appeared in 12 files contained in B.C.’s Police Records Information Management Environment, or PRIME, dating back to April 2018, when Van Rootselaar was approximately 10 years old. Details surrounding those police interactions remain redacted.
Records further state that an RCMP inspector described the shooter as being “obsessed with guns.”
Police searching Van Rootselaar’s residence after the massacre reported finding an unloaded shotgun, a pellet gun and “insecure firearms,” while investigators subsequently attempted to trace four firearms seized from the school and another location.
Much of the evidence remains hidden from public view. Nearly seven pages dealing with Van Rootselaar’s social-media activity are completely redacted, as are details concerning the ChatGPT conversations and several crucial timestamps documenting the RCMP response.
The Feb. 10 attack left six victims dead inside Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. Van Rootselaar was later found dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
The shooting is now the subject of a coroner’s inquest examining, among other issues, mental health, access to firearms and the role of artificial intelligence.
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