Tumbler Ridge documents reveal school shooter was ‘obsessed’ with guns

Hundreds of pages of court documents detailing what happened during the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting on Feb. 10 have finally been released.

Media outlets from across the country fought for transparency on behalf of the victims’ families, the community of Tumbler Ridge, and the nation.

The files reveal chilling new details about the killer, but a lot of information is still being withheld from the public.

The Tumbler Ridge killer—18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar—was a known name to local officers.

A sworn police document known as an ITO, written by RCMP Const. Jonathan Paquin, confirms: “Jesse had mental health problems and was fascinated by firearms.”

The shooter, a male who identified as female, was the eldest child and the records note they were “obsessed with guns.”

On Feb. 10, five innocent children and an educator were gunned down in the safety of their school.

The victims included 12-year-old Kylie May Smith, 12-year-old Ticaria Lampert, 12-year-old Zoey Benoit, 12-year-old Abel Mwansa, 13-year-old Ezekiel Schofield and educator Shannda Aviugana-Durand.

The horror that unfolded inside Tumbler Ridge Secondary was captured on the body camera of a responding officer.

“I have watched CCTV footage from Tumbler Ridge Secondary School,” Paquin writes, but pages and pages of potential context and crucial details – scrubbed clean by authorities – leaving only the confirmation that Van Rootselaar acted as a lone wolf.

Van Rootselaar killed their mother and stepbrother first – 39-year-old Jennifer Strang and 11-year-old Emmett Jacobs.

Police discovered insecure firearms at the family home, but those details in the document are redacted.

Records show a trace on four guns , but the specifics are blacked out from public view.

Disturbing questions linger about how the young killer, with a history of mental health issues, obtained the firearms, why RCMP seized guns from Van Rootselaar’s home, why were the guns returned after the rightful owner went to court and were any of the seized guns used in one of the worst mass shootings in Canadian history?