Related reading: About the Editor | Corrections & Editorial Standards

3 Narratives News | February 12, 2026

In Tumbler Ridge, people talk about the town the way you talk about family. You don’t lock your car. You don’t lock your front door. You walk into your neighbour’s place and call it normal. After Tuesday’s killings at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and a nearby home, that small-town muscle memory feels like it belongs to another life. A community of roughly 2,400 residents is now carrying a national grief that usually belongs to bigger places.

Police have identified the suspect as Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18. Authorities say she killed two family members at home, then went to the school, where more people were killed. As vigils form and names are spoken aloud, the most human question rises first: How did this happen here? The second question follows, quieter but urgent: Was there a moment, earlier, when it could have been interrupted?

RCMP say they had previously attended the home multiple times for mental-health concerns, and that firearms were seized roughly two years ago but later returned after a successful appeal by the lawful owner.

Before the Details: The Two Questions People Are Asking Through Tears

In the days after a tragedy like this, communities don’t just mourn. They investigate in their own way, trying to build a story sturdy enough to stand on. Two narratives are forming, sometimes in conflict, sometimes overlapping:

• Narrative 1 (Systems & thresholds): Authorities had contact, but contact is not control. Police and clinicians operate inside legal and medical limits, and those limits can leave gaps no one wants to admit exist.
• Narrative 2 (Patterns & prevention): “Known to police and mental health” should mean something operational. If warning signals existed, why didn’t they add up to sustained protection, especially around access to firearms?

We feel the town’s grief and by carefully separating what is confirmed from what people fear, and keeping the focus on prevention lessons rather than scapegoats. What can we learn from this tragedy to avoid others in the future?

What We Know (and What We Still Don’t)

• Suspect: Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18. Police say she began publicly identifying as female about six years ago.
• Victims (confirmed by officials and major reporting): Authorities say two family members were killed at a home, and additional victims were killed at the school. Some families have publicly identified loved ones, including 12-year-old Kylie Smith; local reporting has also identified 12-year-old Abel Mwansa Jr.
• Prior contact: RCMP say police attended the residence on multiple occasions over several years for mental-health concerns, and that Van Rootselaar was taken for formal assessment twice.
• Firearms history: RCMP say firearms were seized from the home about two years ago and later returned after the lawful owner successfully appealed the seizure decision. Police also said Van Rootselaar’s firearms licence expired in 2024 and that there were no firearms registered in her name.
• What remains unknown (as of publication): A clear motive; the full timeline and depth of mental-health system involvement; what information, if any, was shared across agencies or with the school; and whether investigators have confirmed any “leakage” (warnings, threats, or hints shared with others) before the attack.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and B.C. Premier David Eby have both spoken publicly about mourning and support for the town, with Carney planning to attend a vigil and the province marking an official day of mourning.

Narrative 1: Systems & Thresholds (What Authorities Say They Knew, and Why That Didn’t Automatically Stop It)

From the RCMP’s perspective, the public is being asked to sit with an uncomfortable truth: contact is not control. Police can attend a home repeatedly and still not have lawful grounds to do what the public imagines police can do in hindsight.

RCMP have said they visited Van Rootselaar’s home multiple times for mental-health concerns, and that she was taken for formal assessments twice. That matters, but in this worldview, it does not equal an open-ended power to detain someone indefinitely or to broadcast mental-health information across agencies. Mental-health apprehensions have legal thresholds, and then medical decisions take over. Privacy rules are not a bureaucratic preference; they are part of the ethical architecture of care.

The firearms detail is the hardest piece for institutions to speak about without sounding like they are explaining away pain. Police say they seized firearms from the home about two years ago, then returned them after the lawful owner appealed and was successful. That appeal process exists for a reason: Canada’s system is designed to prevent arbitrary state power. It is also designed with an assumption that risk can be evaluated and, sometimes, resolved.

In this narrative, the gap is not one of indifference. It is one of thresholds: thresholds for seizure, thresholds for continued removal, thresholds for involuntary treatment, thresholds for sharing information, thresholds for what can be proven before a tragedy becomes “predictable.”

And there is another guardrail authorities keep returning to: motive remains unknown. Investigators have cautioned against speculation, including speculation that turns identity into explanation. The job of the investigation, as police would put it, is to build a timeline and a fact base sturdy enough to hold up in daylight and in court, not to satisfy the internet’s need for instant meaning.

“Pieces were known. But pieces did not become a single, actionable picture under the legal standards that trigger lasting restraint.”

That is the official posture in plain language. It may be true. It may also be the very thing the town cannot accept yet.

Narrative 2: Patterns & Prevention (How Many “Known” Signals Does It Take Before We Act?)

In the second narrative, “known to police and mental health” isn’t a footnote. It’s the whole indictment. Not necessarily of individual officers or clinicians, but of a system that can touch the same file again and again without producing sustained safety.

If a household has repeated police visits tied to mental-health concerns, critics ask: What is the escalation ladder? If firearms were seized and then returned, the question becomes sharper: what evidence was weighed, and what risk was accepted? If a young person is repeatedly in crisis, repeatedly intersecting with institutions, and still ends up with access to lethal means, then the system begins to look like a relay race where everyone touches the baton, and nobody runs the finish.

This narrative is also where the public argument fractures into two very different impulses. One impulse says: Do not turn this into an identity war. The other says: You can’t forbid people from asking whether identity conflict, social rejection, and mental-health crisis sometimes overlap in ways that increase risk.

Are there similarities in other high-profile cases where a perpetrator was described as transgender or nonbinary? The honest answer is that the sample is small, and the claims online are often exaggerated or simply false, with a political agenda wanting to discredit LGBTQ. But a few cases do come up repeatedly in public debate, and they are worth reviewing carefully as case files, not as a stereotype.

Case file A: Nashville’s Covenant School shooter (2023)

In Nashville, the shooter was widely reported as transgender (a trans man). The police summary describes extensive pre-attack planning and notes a final message to a friend shortly before the attack, a form of “leakage” that researchers say is common in targeted violence. The case is frequently cited because it combines several elements the public recognizes: mental-health history, planning, and a trace left in communication.

Case file B: Club Q in Colorado Springs (2022)

In the Club Q case, the accused later described themselves as nonbinary, and prosecutors argued that the claim appeared after the attack and may have been strategic. Separate reporting describes prior violent threats and missed prevention opportunities, which became part of later lawsuits and public criticism. This case is often invoked in arguments about what systems do when they have warning signals in hand and still fail to reduce risk.

Now comes the hard part: do these cases establish a “transgender pattern,” or do they show something else entirely? I asked ChatGPT to investigate and look for patterns.

Those who believe the identity angle matters tend to frame it like this: transgender or nonbinary identification can sometimes coincide with severe distress, social conflict, or family instability, and in rare instances, those pressures may sit inside a larger crisis that turns outward. They argue that refusing to even study the overlap is ideological and that prevention requires intellectual honesty about every possible risk pathway.

Others reply with an equally forceful claim: that this is cherry-picking. They point to the data showing transgender perpetrators are rare in mass shootings, and argue the identity focus is a distraction that grows stigma and fear toward an entire demographic that is far more likely to be victimized than to harm others.

In this narrative, the real question is not “which side wins the argument.” It is whether systems can learn to detect and manage risk early, without letting culture-war storylines hijack the prevention work.

The Silent Story: What Actually Predicts the Next One (Even When Motive Is Unknown)

If you’re looking for lessons that prevent the next tragedy, the most useful comparison is not “this identity versus that identity.” It’s the pathway that appears again and again in targeted violence: crisis, warning behaviors, information gaps, and access to lethal means.

Large threat-assessment research (including work summarized by the U.S. Secret Service and other public-safety researchers) repeatedly finds a few consistent realities: attacks are often preceded by concerning behaviors noticed by others, and intervention points usually exist. Yet those concerns don’t always travel to the right adult, the right agency, or the right process in time.

Associated Press reporting on Secret Service analysis of mass attackers in public spaces found that many attackers exhibited concerning behaviors before the violence, and that in a *meaningful share of cases, that information was not relayed to authorities. In plain terms: people saw something, but the system didn’t receive it in a way that triggered prevention.

Researchers have a name for one of the most important warning behaviors: leakage, when a person communicates intent to harm, directly or indirectly, to someone else or through posts and messages. Studies and government summaries note that leakage, fixation, grievances, escalating stressors, and planning often leave trails. The prevention lesson is not to “profile” identity. It is to build a culture and a protocol that treats concerning behavior as actionable information.

1) “Known to police” should trigger a structured review, not just repeated visits

Repeated crisis calls to the same address should raise a prevention question that is operational, not rhetorical: Is there a multidisciplinary escalation step? A documented risk formulation? A plan to reduce risk during instability? RCMP have confirmed multiple attendances and formal mental-health assessments in this case. The unanswered question is whether those contacts were ever converted into a sustained, coordinated management plan.

2) Firearms removal and return decisions should be treated like high-stakes safety engineering

Police say firearms were seized and later returned after an appeal by the lawful owner. In many tragedies, the most painful question is not “Why did someone own a gun?” but

“Why was access restored when warning signals were already on record?”

Canada’s “red flag” tools (emergency prohibition or emergency limitations on access orders) exist to temporarily reduce access when someone may be a danger to themselves or others. The prevention question is whether the public understands these tools and whether communities can use them quickly, without shame or confusion.

3) Social media “leakage” is real, but public reporting must stay evidence-based

In the immediate aftermath of mass violence, social media often becomes a second crime scene: rumors, screenshots, false identities, recycled hoaxes. In Tumbler Ridge, police have not publicly confirmed a detailed social-media trail as evidence. Separate reporting has pointed to older family posts and a now-deleted YouTube channel described as being about “hunting, self reliance, guns and stuff,” but that is not the same as confirmed pre-attack threats or a confirmed motive. For prevention, the point is practical: if someone posts threats or talks about harming others, report it early. For journalism, the point is restraint: treat circulating claims as leads until confirmed.

4) Identity is not a proven predictor, but belonging and conflict can still matter

Search for Acceptance is a real human question, and it deserves a careful answer. Investigators have not publicly confirmed bullying, rejection, or identity conflict as a motive in this case. More broadly, credible datasets and fact-checking reviews indicate that transgender perpetrators are rare in mass shootings, and mass shootings are overwhelmingly committed by cisgender men. That means identity is not a meaningful standalone predictor. But it does not mean that social conflict, family stress, isolation, or untreated crisis are irrelevant. The prevention lens stays on observable behavior, crisis support, and reducing access to lethal means when someone is spiraling, whatever their identity.

5) The community layer is not “soft,” it’s operational

In a close-knit town, people noticed changes. They overheard comments. They saw posts. They sensed when someone is unraveling. The silent failure in many tragedies is not that no one noticed. It’s that reporting felt socially dangerous, or confusing, or pointless. Prevention is rarely one heroic act. It is usually a chain of small, early interventions that are taken seriously.

If someone threatens harm, talks about attacking others, or seems in crisis, tell a trusted adult immediately and contact emergency services. Getting help early is not “snitching.” It is protection.

Key Takeaways

• RCMP say the suspect, Jesse Van Rootselaar (18), had multiple prior police contacts tied to mental-health concerns and was taken for formal assessment twice.
• Police say firearms were seized from the residence about two years ago but later returned after the lawful owner successfully appealed.
• Police have said the suspect’s firearms licence expired in 2024 and that no firearms were registered in her name.
• Public debate is pulling toward an identity storyline, but credible data reviews indicate transgender perpetrators are rare in mass shootings; prevention work focuses on behaviors and access, not stereotypes.
• Threat-assessment research repeatedly finds intervention points often exist, but information sharing and escalation protocols fail.

Questions This Article Answers

What did police publicly say they knew about Jesse Van Rootselaar before the killings?

RCMP and major reporting say police attended the residence multiple times for mental-health concerns, took her for formal assessment twice, and previously seized firearms that were later returned after an appeal by the lawful owner.

Were there warning signs on social media?

Authorities have not publicly confirmed a detailed pre-attack social-media trail as evidence. Some reporting references older family posts and a now-deleted YouTube channel described as relating to hunting and firearms, but that is not the same as confirmed threats or motive.

Do other “transgender perpetrator” cases show a reliable pattern?

A few high-profile cases are repeatedly cited in public debate, but credible data reviews indicate transgender perpetrators are rare in mass shootings. Researchers emphasize behaviors (leakage, crisis, fixation, planning) and access to weapons as the actionable prevention focus.

What prevention lesson matters most for small communities?

Build a simple, trusted reporting pathway, and ensure repeated crisis contacts trigger structured escalation and coordination. Prevention often depends on early reporting, rapid support, and temporary reductions in access to lethal means during instability.

Primary sources referenced: Reuters (Feb. 12, 2026) | Reuters (Feb. 11, 2026) | RCMP update | Public Safety Canada: Red Flag laws | Reuters Fact Check (Sept. 6, 2024) | FactCheck.org (Sept. 17, 2025) | Nashville PD Covenant School case summary | AP on Secret Service findings (warning behaviors)