Two days after Tumbler Ridge’s Jesse Van Rootselaar shot and killed eight people in one of Canada’s deadliest mass shootings in almost four decades, a motive for the attack remains unclear and may never be known, according to police.
The identity of the perpetrator was confirmed by the RCMP on Wednesday. Van Rootselaar was born a biological male and began to transition to a female about six years ago, Dwayne McDonald, deputy commissioner of the RCMP in British Columbia, said.
But as their investigation begins, many wonder if the 18-year-old’s interest in firearms, past mass shootings and drugs — as evidenced on social media — along with a history of mental health interactions with police were warning signs for what was to come.
Here’s what’s known about Van Rootselaar.
Guns and drugs
Once the RCMP confirmed the shooter’s identity, various social media accounts linked to Van Rootselaar have surfaced. All of them are now inactive or marked as private.
Among them was a YouTube account and channel that used a female anime character and a rifle set against a pink-and-white background, likely a transgender pride flag, as the profile image, according to the
Vancouver Sun
.
The channel, which YouTube deactivated later Wednesday for violating community guidelines, had “None of this makes sense” as a description. At some point, the username was changed from JesseBoy to JessJessUwU.
The
Cambridge Dictionary
defines UwU as the characters “used in text
messag
e
s
and on social media to express happiness and cuteness.”
Jennifer Strang, Van Rootselaar’s mother and one of the shooting victims, encouraged Facebook friends to follow the page in a July 2021 post, noting the child “posts about hunting, self reliance, guns and stuff.”
An archived version of the account viewed by the
U.K. Telegraph
found videos of Van Rootselaar firing a tactical 12-gauge shotgun and a semi-automatic carbine at a shooting range.
Police said Van Rootselaar’s minor’s firearms licence expired in 2024 and they are investigating whether the guns found at the scene — a long gun and a modified handgun — were legally obtained and by whom as part of the investigation.
Van Rootselaar’s passion for firearms was shared by Strang.
“Think it’s time to take them out for some target practice,” Strang captioned
a 2024 Facebook photo
of rifles in a hunting box.
The Telegraph also reported that Van Rootselaar, on an undisclosed social media channel but likely Reddit based on a similar report from The Sun, posted about using DMT psychedelic mushrooms. On one occasion, Van Rootselaar alleged the latter resulted in the family home nearly being burned down.
“I tried shrooms once, it was a small unmeasured dose and it was chill,” JesseBoy347 wrote, per The Sun.
“The second time I tried it I took 3 grams of Blue Meanie ground up into some peanut butter and had a complete break from reality and did a lot of irrational things, I felt like I was dreaming. Many consequences ensued.”
The London Times also linked the same account to Van Rootselaar, noting the teenager claimed to be treating ADHD and OCD with antidepressants and, on occasion, antipsychotics in 2023.
Meanwhile, Van Rootselaar has a now-private
TikTok account
using the same profile image under the username “jessestrangg” on which the Sun found several videos of 2023 Nashville, TN, school shooter Audrey Hale reposted.
The U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism (COE) found
“a fascination with violence and white supremacy”
on two more accounts associated with Van Rootselaar.
The COE identified an X account sharing content celebrating a 2022 Buffalo supermarket mass shooting and the 2019 attack on the Christchurch mosque in New Zealand. The profile photo featured an image of the latter gunman over a Sonnenrad, a neo-Nazi symbol, and a transgender pride flag.
Antisemitic content was also shared on the account.
“I need to hate jews because the zionists want me to hate jews. This benefits them, somehow,” reads a post two days before the shooting.
The ADL said the user also pushed the Northwest Territorial Imperative, a 1970s white-separatist movement which encouraged Caucasians to relocate to the Northwestern states to establish an ethnostate in the region.
The organization reported Van Rootselaar was active on WatchPeopleDie (WPD), a forum that hosts videos of people being maimed or killed. Content on an account believed to belong to the shooter featured and since removed, included photos of guns and videos of the shooter using them.
ADL said Van Rootselaar called violent content “addictive.”
“I’ve tried to stray away from watching this type of thing before cuz it really sucks me in and is a massive useless time dump,” he wrote.
“To say it ‘doesn’t effect me’ is likely naive.”
Two months before the shooting, ADL said Van Rootselaar viewed the WPD profile associated with 2024 Abundant Life school shooter Natalie Rupnow.
Mental health history
According to police, Van Rootselaar was not attending Tumbler Ridge Secondary School at the time of the shooting, having previously dropped out of school four years ago for reasons they did not disclose.
Police don’t believe the shooter was targeting anyone specific at the school and couldn’t confirm if the incident was related to previous bullying they’d experienced.
Van Rootselaar was, however, known to local enforcement.
“Police had attended that residence on multiple occasions over the past several years, dealing with concerns of mental health with respect to our suspect,” RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald said at a News Conference on Wednesday, noting the last came in spring 2025.
Police seized firearms on one of those visits, but they were subsequently returned after the undisclosed lawful owner petitioned for them.
He said that Van Rootselaar was also apprehended several times for assessment under the province’s Mental Health Act.
During a press conference outside Tumbler Ridge town hall on Wednesday, B.C. Premier David Eby said authorities are working with the public health care system officials to help “understand what interactions may have taken place.”
According to court records obtained by The Telegraph, Van Rootselaar and his four siblings were living a “nomadic lifestyle” between southeastern Newfoundland, from where Strang hails, and B.C.
“It can hardly be the case that the children are tied in any meaningful sense to that one location,” B.C. Supreme Court judge Anthony Saunders wrote in a ruling ordering Van Rootselaar’s mother to give her children telephone access to their father.
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