Residents hug as they place flowers at a memorial for the victims of a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., in February. The province's coroner says an inquest into the shooting will be held.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
British Columbia’s chief coroner said Tuesday his office will hold an inquest into the mass school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, with a wide mandate to explore questions on topics including the mental-health services provided to the shooter and her access to guns.
Chief Coroner Jatinder Baidwan said the shooting last month, which left nine people dead, including the shooter, was a “senseless act of violence.”
“The inquest may also consider other systemic factors that emerge through the evidence that we will hear, including how mental health and public safety systems intersect with firearms oversight and how information is shared between online platforms’ emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and law enforcement,” Dr. Baidwan said at a press conference.
On Feb. 10, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar shot and killed her mother and 11-year-old half-brother at their family home in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. She then went to the local high school and killed five students and an education assistant, before turning a gun on herself minutes after police arrived at the school. It was one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history.
B.C. Chief Coroner Dr. Jatinder Baidwan has called an inquest into the deaths of nine people in Tumbler Ridge. He says the inquest will examine how mental health and the public safety systems intersect.
The Canadian Press
Dr. Baidwan did not give specifics on when or how the inquest would begin or how long it might take. But he said his office may not wait for the conclusion of a separate probe by the RCMP.
“It rather depends on where they take their investigation,” he said.
Coroner’s inquests do not assign fault or blame, and the jury is given the goal of fact-finding, and producing recommendations. They often include information discovered during police investigations.
Proceeding before the criminal probe is completed would be unusual, said Neil Chantler, a B.C. lawyer with a long history of involvement in high-profile coroners’ inquests and public inquiries.
Mr. Chantler said that typically, “the coroner would be very reluctant to interfere in any way with an ongoing police investigation.”
“The difference here is that as far as we know ... the perpetrator of this very troubling incident is deceased, and there may not be a criminal trial,” Mr. Chantler said.
Any decision about when to go forward with an inquest would almost certainly be made in consultation with the RCMP, Mr. Chantler said, so as not to risk undermining any potential related criminal charges.
Police have not publicly discussed a motive in the killings, but family members of the shooter have described a deeply troubled youth with a history of severe mental illness, including stays in psychiatric facilities.
Police have also acknowledged that, prior to the shooting, firearms were seized and later returned to the home where the shooter lived. It remains unclear why the weapons were returned, and whether any of the seized weapons were used in the shootings. At least two of the four weapons used had never been seized, police said, and they are trying to determine how the suspect got one of the firearms that caused the most damage.
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The shootings have also spurred questions about the role artificial intelligence and chatbots may have played in the killings. Tech company OpenAI has said that it flagged and suspended the shooter’s account with its ChatGPT chatbot last summer because of messages that included discussions of gun violence, but didn’t notify law enforcement.
With a case this high-profile, Mr. Chantler said there is also the risk of an inquest’s terms of reference becoming so broad that the process becomes unwieldy.
“These are huge issues. Any one of these could occupy a multi-weeks-long inquiry,” he said.
It will be a challenge, Mr. Chantler said, to balance the need to answer these broad questions within the limited scope of a coroner’s inquest.
The inquest will likely also consider whether the level of support for gender diversity in the context of mental-health struggles may have played a role in the tragedy, Dr. Baidwan said. The Tumbler Ridge shooter was born male and had begun a transition to living as a female in recent years.
In public statements in the weeks following the tragedy, B.C. Premier David Eby repeatedly promised either a coroner’s inquest or a public inquiry if the police investigation failed to produce satisfying answers about what went wrong and why.
Both the BC Greens and the Official Opposition BC Conservatives said a public inquiry would be a more appropriate mechanism than a coroner’s inquest to examine the killings.