What to know about the deadly shooting at a school in Canada

VANCOUVER, Canada (AP) — Ten people are dead after shootings at a school and home in remote northern British Columbia.

Canadian authorities say seven people died and more than 25 were wounded Tuesday in the shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. Two more people were found dead at a nearby home, and a woman believed by police to be the shooter also was found dead, apparently from a self-inflicted wound.

Some Canadian outlets are reporting that the identity of the shooter was someone 18 years old named Jesse Strang, but I haven't seen that confirmed from any major outlets yet, and still hasn't been confirmed whether or not they were a student there (seeing conflicting reports about that)

Jesse Van Rootselaar (August 4, 2007 – February 10, 2026),[41][42] also known as Jesse Strang,[43][44][45] was identified as the shooter by RCMP deputy commissioner Dwayne McDonald,[18] after initially being described by the RCMP as "a female in a dress with brown hair".[46][47] McDonald stated that Van Rootselaar was a trans woman.[18][48] Van Rootselaar had dropped out of school about four years prior;[49] McDonald disclosed that there was no information that suggested she was bullied at school.[50][51] Van Rootselaar and her siblings had been the subject of custody disputes between their parents, and had moved between Newfoundland and Labrador and Western Canada multiple times between 2010 and 2015.[52] Van Rootselaar's father said that Jesse never used the Van Rootselaar name, and that he had not been part of Jesse's life "due to decisions by Jesse's mother."[53]

Van Rootselaar's YouTube profile picture featured a female anime character and rifle set against a pink-and-white-striped background.[54] Her TikTok account, which used the same profile image as the YouTube account, featured multiple reposted videos of a transgender mass shooter who killed six people at a Christian school in Nashville in 2023.[54]

Van Rootselaar additionally described trying to "burn [her] house down after using psychedelic mushrooms, and regularly took DMT – another powerful hallucinogenic drug."[55] The mother of one of the victims, who was also friends with the shooter's family, confirmed that Jesse had "tried to light a mattress on fire 'and burn the house down.'"

Obviously, the information is subject to change (as Wiki info often can be)


...but a lot to unpack here. The fact that Jesse (if Wiki is true) was repeatedly posting TikTok content about the Tennessee mass shooter (who was Trans, and left behind a manifesto explaining their reasons for the shooting that were ideologically motivated), should have been a red flag.

Sounds like there was a dispute about something between the parents.

If the mother was that hands-off that they were allowing their child to drop out of school at age 14, and evidently let them play with guns despite having a pretty apparent mental health problem and an affinity for psychedelic drugs that detached them from reality


It's the part of this that nobody wants to talk about out of fear of getting cancelled, but the reality is that gender dysphoria seems to go hand-in-hand with some other pretty serious mental illnesses.


The rates of schizophrenia and other severe personality disorders are nearly 50 times higher in people aged 10-17 who identify as non-conforming vs their cisgender counterparts.

By trying to eliminate the pathology aspect in efforts to "normalize" to spare peoples' feelings, it's caused society (and the medical profession) to overlook certain things and perhaps prescribe the wrong approach.

Given that huge contrast in personality disorder rates, prudence would dictate that if a young person presents with the "I feel like I should have been born as the other sex, and its got me all messed up in the head", a responsible practitioner would first try to assess if it's a legitimate case of gender dysphoria as a stand-alone issue, or is it one of the other aforementioned disorders causing gender dysphoria.

There used to be a little higher of a bar to clear, the fact that so many young people are identifying this way now vs. 20 years ago (and how high the rates of personality disorders are among them) could be an indicator that situations what would've been appropriately diagnosed as a personality disorder (and treated with meds) are now just being immediately chalked up as "They're trans, that's all there is to it, everyone just needs to affirm that starting ASAP, no more questions allowed" is leaving underlying conditions undiagnosed and untreated.


There are cases in the medial literature that used to be studied and reported on before it was considered "off-limits" to ask about

Here's one from the NIH:
The authors present clear pattern of gender identity variations coinciding solely with psychotic episodes during schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. The authors postulate that gender dysphoria can co-occur with other psychiatric disorders and may correspond with acute psychosis. The distinction is critical to make to ensure accurate diagnoses regarding whether gender dysphoria is a symptom of psychotic illness, or if there is a longer-standing concern as to the patient’s gender identity and assignment.

In this case report, the patient will be referred to without using pronouns given fluctuations in pronouns over time. A Hispanic person, assigned male at birth (AMAB), identified as female upon admission. The patient denied any significant or contributing past medical history. The patient had a past psychiatric history of schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, and presented involuntarily to the psychiatric inpatient unit for bizarre behavior and hallucinations for the past three months. Per the patient’s mother’s report, the patient had been refusing to eat, was easily agitated, and was exhibiting signs of mania.

rambot said:

This poor kid had significant, SIGNIFICANT mental health things goings on. Personally, I'm not totally sure they should have been in parental care a long time ago....but not having the details, seems hard to judge.

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I'm wondering how it was legal for them to even drop out of school at age 14.

Perhaps it's because the only provinces I'm familar with are Ontario (and to a lesser degree Quebec) -- with my cabin being in Ontario about an hour away from the QC border -- I remember one my relatives up there saying something to the effect of it being illegal for kids to drop or (or be pulled out of school) before age 16, barring cases of gifted kids who are able to get their credits and graduate early.

Between that, and the fact that it sounds like the family was no strangers to the police, as they'd had to respond multiple times to the home for domestic matters (including one where the kid was trying to burn the house down), seems as if protective services should've stepped in at some point in the past 3 years.

rambot said:

This kid's mental health was insufficiently addressed by parents and system (of course, rural mental health care is abysmal; but this is not a single feature to Canada).

Click to expand...

Does that perhaps dovetail into to what I was mentioning before pertaining to how medical professionals are proceeding with cases when patients present with gender-related matters?

Based on the medical literature, there seems to be two different situation... one that's sort of a "stand-alone" situation, where the other seems to have an onset that correlates to other personality disorders and schizoaffective disorders as a symptom.

And because it's become something of a taboo to question it or take any other approach apart from immediate affirmation and transition, perhaps people in that latter category are getting overlooked a bit and being given the wrong approach.

Obviously the studies and medical literature show positive outcomes for affirmation with regards to gender dysphoria as a stand-alone issue when other issues aren't present. (or is the sole source of distress)

But if a person falls into a category like the person I referenced from the medical literature (or this kid in question who was the shooter), where there's a whole host of other issues causing them to have a detachment from reality (in the case of the shooter, sounds like a combination of schizophrenia and trying to self medicate with psychedelic street drugs), the gender dysphoria could be merely a symptom and not the cause in those cases, meaning affirmation approaches aren't going to do anything for the underlying problems.

That recent statistic I provided earlier showing that youths that present with gender identity issues are 50 times more likely to have one of those disorders compared to their counterparts seems to stand out as a big red flag. I've tried to find some stats to see if that was also true in in the 80's and 90's.

Because if it was a case where back in those days, Gender Dysphoria diagnoses were much rarer, but had much smaller overlap with those other personality disorders, then that could highlight a major blunder with how these situations are being handled now.

I would suspect that back in the 80's and 90's, more clinicians were probably be more diligent in asking the probing questions and deep diving to rule out other things before racing to that diagnosis and affirmation protocol. But now there are taboos around doing that. If a clinician said "Let's proceed with some caution here, I want to make sure there's not an underlying mental health issue of some other kind that could be causing this", they'd be getting blackballed in some places.