Canada seeks answers from OpenAI for failing to alert police after suspending school shooter’s account | Tumbler Ridge school shooting
Canada’s artificial intelligence minister said he summoned representatives from tech company OpenAI after the company refused to notify police after suspending the account of a user who became the perpetrator of one of the country’s worst-ever school shootings.
Evan Solomon says he’s “deeply disturbed” by the situation reports The company that operates the popular ChatGPT chatbot suspended Jesse Van Rootselaar’s account in June 2025 due to “escalation of violent activity” but did not contact Canadian law enforcement.
On February 10, the 18-year-old killed eight people in the town of Tumbler Ridge. The victims included five students aged between 12 and 13 and a 39-year-old teaching assistant. Van Rootselaar killed his mother and half-brother in their nearby home before attacking the school.
The shooter had been describing violent gun-related scenarios to ChatGPT over several days in June, and the automated review system had flagged it. Wall StreetJournal. But the San Francisco tech company said it felt the account activity did not indicate “credible or imminent planning” and so it banned his account but did not notify authorities in Canada.
Solomon told reporters he contacted OpenAI over the weekend to set up a meeting in Ottawa and was waiting for the company’s senior security representatives to explain how they decided to forward cases to law enforcement.
“They will come here [Tuesday]”We’re going to have a sit-down meeting to make a statement about the safety protocols, when they escalate, and the thresholds for escalation to police, so we can have a better understanding of what’s going on and what they’re doing,” he said.
Canada’s federal government is currently considering how (if at all) it might regulate the use of wildly popular AI chatbots, including the extent to which minors can freely use the products.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that staff at the tech company considered alerting Canadian police to Van Rootselaar’s activities last year. In a statement, OpenAI said that after learning about the attack at the school, employees reached out to the RCMP and provided information about the individual and his use of ChatGPT. Van Rootselaar also used the Roblox game to create a virtual mall full of guns, allowing players to shoot each other before the Tumbler Ridge attack.
Although the company framed its decision to reach out to the RCMP as proactive, its handling of the matter still drew criticism.
The British Columbia provincial government confirmed to the Guardian that an OpenAI representative met with officials in a pre-scheduled meeting a day after the shooting, but did not disclose that the company had suspended the attacker’s ChatGPT account months earlier due to its violent nature. The meeting was first reported by the Globe and Mail.
Just two days after the mass shooting, OpenAI representatives reached out to the province for help contacting the RCMP.
British Columbia premier David Eby said in a statement that the families’ suffering was “unimaginable” and that the revelation that OpenAI had “relevant intelligence” before the attack was “deeply troubling for the families of the victims and all British Columbians.”
