A Town of 2,700, a Body Count of 9, and a Killer Who Once Lived Among Them: Inside Canada’s Nightmare in Tumbler Ridge

The suspect died in the school library, a self-inflicted wound the only mercy she granted. By the time police kicked down barricaded classroom doors and escorted trembling children past blood-spattered lockers, Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, had already completed a methodical rampage that began not at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, but inside her own home—where her 39-year-old mother and 11-year-old stepbrother lay dead before the first school bell ever rang . What authorities initially feared was a death toll of ten has now settled at nine, one young female victim miraculously clinging to life after being airlifted from the scene, her survival the only revision to a casualty count that includes a 39-year-old educator, three 12-year-old girls, two boys aged 12 and 13, and a family annihilated from within . The shooter, who police confirm began transitioning from male to female six years ago and identified socially and publicly as a woman, had dropped out of this same school four years prior—a former student who apparently never stopped rehearsing her return . When RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald stood before cameras Wednesday to identify Van Rootselaar, he revealed a paper trail of warnings: multiple mental health apprehensions under British Columbia’s Mental Health Act, repeated police visits to the family residence, firearms temporarily seized and then—inexplicably—returned following a petition by the lawful owner . A long gun and a modified handgun were recovered inside the school. Van Rootselaar’s firearms license had expired in 2024. The system had her in its grip, then let her go. And a town of 2,700 people is now burying its children.

What we know about what happened inside those 72 minutes will haunt this community for generations. Students huddled behind barricaded tables for over two hours, texting parents photos from inside the lockdown, listening to police boots kick down doors that were never designed to withstand this particular American-imported horror . One Grade 12 student described the surreal evacuation: “It felt like I was somewhere that I had only seen across a TV” . His mother, who worked at the hospital visible from the school parking lot, watched RCMP officers crouch with rifles drawn and stayed on the phone with her son until she saw his face at the community center . Mayor Darryl Krakowka, who has called Tumbler Ridge home for 19 years, told reporters what everyone in this coal-mining town already knew: “I will know every victim. I don’t call them residents. I call them family” . The shooter’s uncle reportedly identified her to media by a different surname—Strang—while police officially maintain Van Rootselaar, a discrepancy that underscores how little we still understand about what drives an 18-year-old to execute her own mother, her baby brother, and six strangers before turning the final bullet on herself . Prime Minister Mark Carney, visibly shaken, ordered flags to half-mast and stood with Parliament in a moment of silence, but his words—about empathy, unity, and coming together in crisis—cannot resurrect three 12-year-old girls who will never graduate, a stepbrother who never made it to middle school, or the mother who raised the person who killed her . Canadian school shootings remain statistically rare; this is the second deadliest in the nation’s history, trailing only the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre . But rarity offers cold comfort when you are the community that statistics abandon. Tumbler Ridge now joins a fraternity no town wants to enter—one defined not by its scenic location near the Alberta border, but by the date February 10, 2026, when a former student walked back through familiar doors and reminded Canadians that gun laws, mental health interventions, and expired licenses are only as strong as the gaps between them.