Police in Canada are still investigating the motives behind the actions of 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootelaar, the suspect in a recent violent incident, and how she managed to carry it out.
In Tumbler Ridge, a mining community with about 2,700 residents, details from police reports, court documents, and family statements are revealing a troubled upbringing for the teenager.
Jesse Strang was the birth name given by her mother, Jennifer Strang. Her biological father was Van Rootelaar, a man she hardly knew following her parents’ difficult separation. Although her father resided in the same town, they had minimal interaction.
Van Rootelaar left school around four years ago, according to officials.
In her adolescence, she became familiar to local law enforcement. She frequently visited the mental-health unit at the home she shared with her mother and younger siblings for assessments under the province’s mental health laws. However, she consistently returned home. At times, firearms stored in the house were confiscated by police and later returned upon petition from a resident.
Van Rootelaar is accused of using four weapons in Tuesday’s fatal attack, which claimed eight lives before she succumbed to a self-inflicted gunshot, authorities reported. Two of the weapons, thought to be the primary ones used, had never been seized by police previously and were unregistered. Locating their source and how Van Rootelaar acquired them remains a key focus for investigators.
A dedicated team is sifting through her online presence and digital history for insights into the reasons and planning behind the mass shooting, as well as examining her previous engagements with police and mental health experts, stated Royal Canadian Mounted Police Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald.
The teen had consulted a gender transition specialist and posted a mirror selfie of her initial makeup attempt, expressing worries about her 6-foot stature’s proportions.
“Why can’t I be petit an smol?” she posted on Reddit.
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Later that year, she shared that she “went crazy and burnt my house down” after a second attempt with psychedelic mushrooms, noting the dosage led to “dangerous psychosis.”
She hoped to discover the proper amount for a “positive experience in my life,” mentioning that electroconvulsive therapy and prescribed drugs hadn’t alleviated her mental health issues.
Her biological father, Justin Van Rootelaar, suggested a turbulent early life for the teen in a statement affirming their distant relationship, which he attributed to her mother.
“While that distance is the reality of our relationship, it does not lessen the heartbreak I feel for the pain that has been caused to innocent people and to the town we call home,” he told Canadian media on Friday.
As a child, Van Rootelaar’s life involved multiple relocations, court records indicate, as her mother frequently moved across the country: from Newfoundland on Canada’s eastern Atlantic coast, to Grand Cache, a small mountain town in western Alberta, and Powell River, a coastal area in southwestern British Columbia.
Around age 7 or 8, a then-pregnant Strang transported her across the country from British Columbia to Chamberlain, Newfoundland, against the father’s wishes. A judge labeled this as “reprehensible conduct” in court documents.
At that time, Van Rootelaar and her father had no relationship for “many years,” but they were starting to communicate via phone, per court records.
Some of Van Rootelaar’s online activity has surfaced. She developed a videogame simulating a mass shooting in a shopping mall on Roblox, the company confirmed. The simulation let a Roblox avatar select weapons and shoot other characters in a mall. It was viewable only by seven users via a separate developer app called Roblox Studio and was never released to the public. The company didn’t specify the creation date.
“We have removed the user account connected to this horrifying incident as well as any content associated with the suspect,” a Roblox spokesperson stated. “We are committed to fully supporting law enforcement in their investigation.”
Archived social media shows Van Rootelaar posting images of herself at a gun range, claiming to have made a bullet cartridge with a 3-D printer, and participating in online talks about YouTube videos by gun enthusiasts.
The trans woman also voiced concerns about transitioning and her interests in anime cartoons and illicit drugs, using “jesseboy347” as a social-media handle, according to a post on her mother’s Facebook page.
In 2023 Reddit posts, at age 15, she wrote in the r/trans forum that transitioning felt “super intimidating,” but she posted there.
The father, who hadn’t initially exercised all his parental rights, sought joint guardianship and requested he be consulted on parental decisions. The sparse relationship between father and child resulted from the mother’s “nomadic lifestyle,” British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Anthony Saunders noted.
Before Strang departed with the child, she texted her ex-partner: “We are moving to Newfoundland,” and “We told your lawyer that last week.” But she hadn’t informed the father exactly where or when she planned to relocate with their child, court documents reveal.
It’s uncertain when the mother returned the children.
Over the next decade, Van Rootelaar began interacting with local police due to mental health issues, and those encounters are now under review in the probe into Tuesday’s events, when police say she fatally shot her 39-year-old mother and 11-year-old half-brother at the family home. She then proceeded to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, fatally shooting six people there—a teacher and five students—and critically injuring two others, police said. She ended her life as officers arrived at the school. Asked if she had been bullied at school, police said they didn’t know but noted she wasn’t currently enrolled as a student.
Amid the complex forensic evidence at both sites, one evident detail has surfaced, said Deputy Commissioner McDonald. Van Rootelaar didn’t seem to have a particular target in mind at the school and shot randomly, he said.
“This suspect was, for lack of a better term, hunting. They were prepared and engaging anybody and everybody they could come in contact with,” McDonald said.
