Tumbler Ridge Shooting Survivors File 30 Lawsuits Against OpenAI

Survivors of a mass shooting in British Columbia filed 30 new lawsuits against OpenAI this week, contending that the company should have notified the police when it shut down the shooter’s disturbing ChatGPT account eight months before the attack.

The lawsuits significantly expand a legal fight against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, that began in April when victims’ families filed seven lawsuits claiming the company could have prevented the shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School on Feb. 10.

That day, Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, took two guns from her home in Tumbler Ridge, a remote town roughly 415 miles northeast of Vancouver, and killed her mother and 11-year-old brother, the authorities said. She then went to the school and killed five students and an educational assistant and shot two other students.

Ms. Van Rootselaar died in the school of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the authorities said.

OpenAI has acknowledged that in June 2025, eight months before the attack, it shut down Ms. Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account after an automated system detected “a violation of our usage policy.” But company officials did not contact the authorities.