Jesse Van Rootselaar, the 18-year-old who killed eight people in Tuesday’s mass shooting in British Columbia, Canada, had a long-documented interest in firearms and school shootings, according to social media posts.
Police received reports that a shooter, now known to be Van Rootselaar, opened fire at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School around 1.28 pm Tuesday. Shortly before heading to the campus, she killed her 39-year-old mother and 11-year-old stepbrother at their home, police have said.
The shooting at the school left three female students, all 12-years-old; two male students, aged 12 and 13; and one 39-year-old educator dead.
Police later found Van Rootselaar’s body at the school, with the teen having died from what is believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Now, it has been revealed that Van Rootselaar was born biologically male but had been transitioning to female over a six-year period.
A TikTok page under the name “jessestrangg,” with Strang being the surname of Van Rootselaar’s mother, reposted several videos about 28-year-old school shooter Audrey Hale. At the time of the shooting, Hale had been going by the name Aiden during gender transition.
Hale opened fire at The Covenant School in March 2023, killing three third-graders and three staff members at the Nashville school.
The TikTok account that shared content related to Hale also had a profile picture that matched a now-deleted YouTube account allegedly belonging to Van Rootselaar.
Both accounts, seen by the Vancouver Sun, had profile pictures of a girl brandishing a rifle in an anime style.
Jennifer Strang, Van Rootselaar’s late mother, promoted the YouTube channel in a Facebook post, also seen by The Vancouver Sun, in which she claimed her daughter “posts about hunting, self-reliance, guns.”
Two guns were recovered from Tumbler Ridge Secondary School after the shooting, though neither was registered to Van Rootselaar, whose gun license expired in 2024.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have confirmed that there was a history of police attendance at Van Rootselaar’s home, with some of the call-outs relating to mental health-related issues.
In one instance, Van Rootselaar was held under the Mental Health Act and checked into a hospital for assessment.
Although details surrounding the attack are still coming to light, some reports are beginning to paint a clearer picture of Van Rootselaar’s upbringing.
Van Rootselaar lived an “almost nomadic life” in her youth, according to a 2015 B.C. Supreme Court family case filing, which led Strang to keep her family in British Columbia at the request of her father.
“These children have led an almost nomadic life, from what I have been told, with multiple moves over the last five years between Newfoundland, Grand Cache and Powell River,” Justice Anthony Saunders wrote in the ruling, which was seen by CBC. “It can hardly be the case that the children are tied in any meaningful sense to that one location.”
Cops have also confirmed that Van Rootselaar dropped out of school around four years before the shooting, although it is unknown whether she actually attended Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.
What happened during the shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School?
Cops have confirmed that Van Rootselaar killed her mother and stepbrother at their home before heading to the school. Authorities received calls about the incident at the school before the shooting at the family’s house.
The RCMP first received reports about the shooting at the school at 1.20 pm local time, with officers arriving two minutes later.
Police received a call about Van Rootselaar’s mother and her stepbrother at around 2.47 pm, after a young female who lived at the address called the cops from a neighbor’s house.
Many of the students barricaded themselves in their classrooms as the shooting unfolded, a 12th-grade student named Darian Quist told CBC News. He said that pupils began sharing pictures with each other from different parts of the campus, giving a fractured view of what was actually going on.
The official death count was listed at 10 for some time before being corrected to 9.
More than 25 people were taken to a local clinic with possible injuries, while two other victims with “significant injuries” were airlifted to the hospital to receive urgent attention.
