The 18-year-old suspected of killing eight people in the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting in Canada reportedly used OpenAI’s ChatGPT in a way that alarmed the company’s staff.
Jesse Van Rootseller’s chat about gun violence was flagged by the company’s LLM abuse monitoring tool and banned in June 2025.
According to the Wall Street Journal, company staff debated whether to contact Canadian law enforcement about the practice, but ultimately decided not to do so. An OpenAI spokesperson said Van Rootselaar’s activities do not meet reporting standards to law enforcement. The company contacted Canadian authorities after the incident.
“Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the Tumbler Ridge tragedy,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement. “We have proactively contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and provided them with information regarding the individual and his use of ChatGPT. We will continue to assist them in their investigation.”
ChatGPT transcripts weren’t the only worrying part of Van Rootselaar’s digital footprint. She appears to have created a game simulating a mall shooting on Roblox, a world simulation platform frequently used by children. She also posted about guns on Reddit.
Van Loetzeler’s instability was known to local police, who were called to her parents’ home where she was under the influence of an unspecified drug and had started a fire.
LLM chatbots built by OpenAI and its competitors have been accused of losing grip on reality and causing mental breakdowns in users during conversations with digital models. Multiple lawsuits have been filed citing recorded chats encouraging people to commit suicide or providing assistance.
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If you are in crisis or considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.
This post has been updated with comment from OpenAI.
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