Canada shooting: Trans teen killed mother and step-brother before school rampage

Canadian authorities have identified an 18-year-old as the suspect in a mass shooting in a remote community in British Columbia that left nine people dead and dozens injured. The suspect, Jesse Van Rootselaar, killed her mother and stepbrother before opening fire at a local school, police said.

Dwayne McDonald, a deputy commissioner at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia, said the suspect was biologically male at birth and began transitioning to female six years ago. He noted that the police would continue to refer to her as female.





The suspect was later found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and authorities said the motive remains unknown.

Van Rootselaar and her family were known to authorities, McDonald said, adding that police had most recently visited the home in the spring in connection with mental health concerns, including self-harm..

“Police had attended that residence on a number of occasions over the last several years dealing with concerns of mental health with our suspect,” McDonald said, as cited by the New York Times, referring to the home where the suspect’s mother and stepbrother were found dead. On one of those instances, he said, “firearms were seized.”

On Tuesday, Van Rootselaar killed her 39-year-old mother and 11-year-old stepbrother at their home in the remote hamlet of Tumbler Ridge, about 700 miles north of Vancouver. She then went to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and began shooting indiscriminately, police said.

Five people were killed at the school, three 12-year-old girls, a 12-year-old boy, a 13-year-old boy, and a 39-year-old female teacher, McDonald said. Police had initially reported six deaths at the school but later corrected the toll, saying a critically injured woman airlifted to hospital had been mistakenly counted among the dead.

Police arrived within two minutes of the shooting, McDonald said, and came under fire as they approached the building. Officers entered the school and found Van Rootselaar dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A long gun and a modified handgun were recovered at the scene.

Tumbler Ridge, a remote community of about 2,400 residents, has a secondary school with roughly 160 students in Grades 7 through 12.

Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said the students and teachers “bore witness to unheard of cruelty” during the shooting, adding that some victims remain in hospital “fighting for their lives.”