The 18-year-old who carried out one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history killed her mother and 11-year-old stepbrother in their home before driving to her former school and methodically murdering six more people—three of them 12-year-old girls—police revealed Wednesday, fundamentally rewriting the timeline and nature of the tragedy.
Jesse Van Rootselaar, a transgender woman who had dropped out of Tumbler Ridge Secondary School four years ago, was found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Her mother, Jennifer Strang, 39, and stepbrother, whose name has not been released, were discovered in a nearby residence after police expanded their search beyond the school.
“The shooting at the nearby home occurred first, then the suspect went to the school,” RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald confirmed. The victims inside the school were a 39-year-old female educator, three 12-year-old female students, a 12-year-old male student, and a 13-year-old male student.
A Known Troubled History—and a Lapsed Gun Licence
Van Rootselaar was not unknown to authorities. Police had attended the family home on “multiple occasions over the past several years,” with some calls related to mental health concerns. British Columbia Premier David Eby announced the province has already “begun the process of reaching out to” the public health care system to “understand what interactions may have taken place.”
Critically, Van Rootselaar had previously possessed a valid gun licence—one that had since lapsed. Police recovered two firearms at the school: a long gun and a modified handgun. McDonald said it remains unclear “the exact roles the firearms played in the shooting,” and authorities have not disclosed how Van Rootselaar obtained the weapons or whether the lapsed licence had any bearing on her access to them.
“Biological Male” Who Transitioned—and a Community Seeking Answers
McDonald also disclosed that Van Rootselaar was “born as a biological male who approximately six years ago began to transition to female.” The detail, while relevant to the shooter’s biography, immediately injected the tragedy into Canada’s already volatile debates over gender identity, mental health care, and youth transition.
Premier Eby, standing outside Tumbler Ridge town hall late Wednesday, did not address the gender dimension directly but focused on the broader systemic failures the case exposes. “We’ve begun the process of reaching out to the public health care system to understand what interactions may have taken place,” he said. The statement implicitly acknowledges what experts and advocates have long warned: that Canada’s patchwork of mental health services, particularly for transgender youth, remains dangerously inadequate.
A Survivor’s Account, A Town’s Grief
Grade 12 student Darian Quist and his classmates barricaded their classroom door with tables for more than two hours while the shooter moved through the building. His mother, Shelley Quist, heard police “kicking” her son’s door down from a block away.
That door, and the 160-student school it belonged to, are now permanently altered. Tumbler Ridge, population 2,400, markets itself as a land of dinosaurs and waterfalls. It has three police vehicles. Its residents do not lock their doors.
“We don’t lock our doors here,” Councillor Chris Norbury told the BBC on Tuesday, before Van Rootselaar’s identity was known. “It is an incredibly safe community… This is a big tragedy here.”
On Wednesday, after learning that the killer was a troubled 18-year-old who grew up among them, that tragedy became something more complicated—and more intimate.
“Fighting for Their Lives”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who suspended a planned trip to Germany following the attack, described the students and teachers as having “borne witness to unheard of cruelty.” He noted that some victims remain in hospital “fighting for their lives.”
The two victims airlifted from the school remain hospitalized. Their conditions have not been released.
What Remains Unknown
Authorities have not established a motive. McDonald stated plainly that “the motive for the attack is not yet known.” Police are still determining whether Van Rootselaar’s documented mental health struggles, her gender transition, her departure from the school four years ago, or some combination of factors contributed to the violence.
They have not explained how an 18-year-old with a lapsed gun licence obtained a modified handgun. They have not disclosed the nature of the “multiple” police attendances at the family home, nor the specific mental health interventions—or lack thereof—that preceded the massacre.
And they have not, despite identifying the shooter, provided any insight into why an 11-year-old boy and his mother were the first to die at the hands of their own family member.
Meanwhile, Mayor Darryl Krakowka, visibly emotional, addressed his community late Wednesday. “Lend your ear when someone needs your ear,” he said. “Lend your shoulder when someone needs your shoulder. Give somebody a hug.”
The advice, humane and practical, also functions as an indictment. Tumbler Ridge is a town where neighbours know each other’s names and doors stay unlocked. Yet for years, the family of an increasingly troubled teenager received multiple police visits and, apparently, insufficient intervention. A gun licence was issued, then lapsed. A child transitioned. A mother tried, and failed, to prevent what came next.
“We don’t lock our doors here,” Norbury said. But locking doors was never the issue. The question now facing Tumbler Ridge—and every community that sees itself reflected in its grief—is what, exactly, the barrier to this horror was supposed to be, and why it was not enough.
