The Coroner of British Columbia has ordered a fulsome inquest into the mass shooting that took place in Tumbler Ridge last month. 

In one of Canada’s deadliest mass shootings, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar shot and killed her mother and 11-year-old half-brother at the family home, before killing five students, an education assistant and herself at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. 

Dr. Jatinder Baidwan says all aspects of the tragedy will be explored, including concerning AI prompts discovered by Chat GPT officials, and the possibility that gender identity played a role. Van Rootselaar was born male but began identifying as a female at the age of 12.  

“We will employ all the skills that we have to investigate the circumstances of what happened. If gender diversity was an issue, and comes up as an issue in those circumstances, then it will be investigated in a fulsome fashion.”

Baidwan says the duration of the inquest will depend on the complexity of the answers found, but he anticipates it will last longer than a typical 1-2-week inquest. 

“If anything is pertinent to the circumstance of death, it doesn’t matter what temporal association was, it can be from years before, we can explore it, and we will.”

 The inquest can begin once the BC RCMP investigation has wrapped up.