Families of Canada shooting victims sue AI developer

Tumbler Ridge school. Photo: Trent Ernst / Tumbler RidgeLines

Families of the victims of a mass shooting at a school in Tumbler Ridge, carried out by an 18-year-old who identified as LGBT, filed seven lawsuits in a San Francisco court on April 29, 2026, against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, according to LifeSiteNews.

The shooting took place on February 10, 2026, in Tumbler Ridge, a small mining town in British Columbia. The suspect – transgender individual Jesse van Rutselaer, dressed in women’s clothing – opened fire at the school, killing eight people, mostly children, and wounding at least 27. It was the second-deadliest school shooting in Canadian history. After the attack, van Rutselaer took his own life; earlier, he had killed his mother and half-brother.

The lawsuits include allegations of negligence, wrongful death, and failure to meet product safety requirements. According to attorney John Rice, the company had information about the shooter’s threats from his exchanges with the ChatGPT chatbot but failed to report them to police. The plaintiffs’ combined claims exceed $1 billion; another 24 lawsuits from other victims are expected by the end of 2026.

As the UOJ reported, in the United States, a group of transgender individuals was accused of creating a cult and committing murders. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly apologized to the residents of Tumbler Ridge, acknowledging that the company had failed to notify law enforcement about the shooter’s blocked account. OpenAI explained that the correspondence had not been assessed as a “credible” and “imminent” threat. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) learned of van Rutselaer’s account only after the tragedy.

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