Eagle Vision Agency / AFP via Getty Images
Aerial view of the middle school and high school building where a shooting took place, leaving at least nine people dead in the small town of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, on February 11, 2026.
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On February 10, 2026, a shooter opened fire at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia, Canada, killing at least seven people and injuring more than 25 others. Two additional individuals were found dead at a nearby home. The shooter was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Preliminary research by the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) suggests the shooter, who police have identified as Jesse Van Rootselaar, followed a troubling pattern of online radicalization marked by engagement with violence and gore content. Unlike recent school attackers, the Tumbler Ridge shooter does not appear to have left behind a manifesto outlining their motives. However, their extensive digital footprint across multiple platforms, including YouTube, Reddit, and WatchPeopleDie (WPD), displays a fascination with violence and weapons, along with an interest in previous mass shooters, including the 2024 Abundant Life shooter.
The Tumbler Ridge shooter appears to have been active on WatchPeopleDie (WPD), an online forum dedicated to hosting gore and violent death videos where glorification of mass shooters and extremist rhetoric is rampant. COE analysts located a WPD account believed to belong to the shooter that featured numerous images of guns and several videos of them firing these weapons, though the account has since been removed by site moderators. COE analysts also identified gun-related posts that are believed to have been posted by the alleged shooter on other platforms. For example, many of the weapons visible in a Facebook post believed to be made by the shooter's mother appears to have been posted multiple times by the shooter on WPD. It is unknown if the shooter used any of these weapons in the attack.
Beyond posting weapons content, the shooter actively consumed death and violence videos on WPD. They made their first comment on a thread that compiled footage of prior mass shootings, writing, "I appreciate this post."
Commenting on another thread featuring footage from a shooting, they wrote, “I love these first person perspective type videos, when the shooter records his or her own actions it’s always heat.”
Two months before the attack at Tumbler Ridge, they viewed the WPD profile associated with the 2024 Abundant Life school shooter, who regularly consumed, engaged with, and posted white supremacist content.
WPD has been linked to several school attackers, including the 2025 Evergreen, 2025 Antioch and 2024 Abundant Life shooters, among others.
In an August 2025 post on WPD, the alleged Tumbler Ridge shooter wrote that they found violent content “addictive,” writing, “I've tried to stray [sic] away from watching this type of thing before cuz it really sucks me in and is a massive useless time dump.”
“To say it ‘doesn’t effect [sic] me is likely naive,” they wrote, adding that “it just doesn’t feel like a big deal.”
Correction, 02/12/26: A preliminary investigation uncovered an X account appearing to belong to the shooter. Upon further investigation, that X account has been found not credible. References to it have been removed.
Update, 02/12/26: This piece has been updated with additional details about the shooter’s online activity.