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OpenAI Allegedly Did Not Alert RCMP After ChatGPT Flagged Violent Chats Before British Columbia School Shooting

February 10, 2026

Following the 02/10/2026 school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, OpenAI acknowledged that a user later identified as the perpetrator, Jesse Van Rootselaar, had previously used ChatGPT to discuss gun violence. The conversations were flagged automatically and reviewed, resulting in the account's termination. However, OpenAI claims it did not alert the RCMP because the content was perceived as non-credible and non-imminent; the company stated it reached out to police after the incident.

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Matched TAIM controls

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Alleged deployer
openai
Alleged developer
openai
Alleged harmed parties
tumbler-ridge-secondary-school-community, teachers, students, minors

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1375

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.