EXCLUSIVE - Investigating the dark online footprint of Canadian mass shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar
Our dig into the Tumbler Ridge shooter’s internet footprint reveals he followed a familiar path of online radicalization - including some breadcrumbs not yet reported anywhere else.
It happened again – In Canada this time.
On Tuesday, February 10th at around 1:20pm, in the small town of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar unleashed a rampage on a local secondary school which tragically ended the lives of 5 students ages 12 to 13 and one teacher. Jesse was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound following the shooting. Investigators found that Jesse had murdered his mother and his 11-year-old stepbrother at his home prior to heading to the school.
At the school, the majority of the students who were killed were cowering in an upstairs school library in an eerie homage to Columbine. Jesse was not related to any of the victims at the school, and authorities haven’t released any information indicating why he chose the school as his target.
It was the deadliest mass shooting in Canada since the 2020 attack in Nova Scotia. School shootings in Canada are quite rare.
There are still some big unanswered questions in the Tumbler Ridge shooting, the biggest being Jesse’s motivations for targeting that specific school. It’s very possible there was a manifesto or other indicators of motive that haven’t yet been publicly released by authorities. Based on what we know so far, a few things are certain.
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