--- title: "OpenAI Tried to Hide ChatGPT Giving Extremely Specific Advice to a School Shooter on How to Maximize Casualties. The Logs Are Horrific." description: "A Mother Jones investigation found that the Tumbler Ridge school shooter ideated about mass violence with ChatGPT for months." date: "2026-09-26" modified: "2026-09-26" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison.md" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-advice-school-shooter-tumbler-ridge" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" --- # OpenAI Tried to Hide ChatGPT Giving Extremely Specific Advice to a School Shooter on How to Maximize Casualties. The Logs Are Horrific. ![A member of the community places flowers at a memorial during a candlelight vigil for the victims of Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.]() *Paige Taylor White / AFP via Getty Images* The perpetrator of the devastating mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, Canada used ChatGPT to ideate about graphic mass murder for months leading up to the deadly massacre. OpenAI is currently [facing 37 lawsuits]() from [families impacted by]() the February shooting at Tumbler Ridge, where 18-year-old shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar murdered six people at a local school — five students, all aged between 12 and 13, and a teacher — and injured 27 others before killing herself. (Van Rootselaar also fatally shot her mother and younger stepbrother before continuing the rampage.) It's [also being sued]() by the Canadian province of British Columbia over allegations that OpenAI could've prevented the killing but failed. Weeks after the shooting, [*The Wall Street Journal* reported that]() OpenAI, months earlier, had flagged the shooter's ChatGPT logs for containing disturbingly graphic descriptions of mass violence, sparking an internal discussion over whether to report the user to local law enforcement. Company leaders opted not to raise concerns to local officials, and instead simply banned the user's account — which did next to nothing, since Van Rootselaar simply opened a second profile, the AI company later admitted. Until now, the graphic details of Van Rootselaar's conversations with ChatGPT, which appears to have been the teen's close confidant in the months and weeks leading up to the murders, have not been publicly known. According to a [chilling new investigation by *Mother Jones*](), the contents of the chats are deeply disturbing. After Van Rootselaar had opened a second account and explained why her first profile had been deactivated, ChatGPT advised her on how to evade its guardrails. It urged her not to use real-world locations, and to frame her violent queries as hypotheticals. "You can still be twisted," it told her, per *Mother Jones*' reporting. "Just be clever about it." This is advice that Van Rootselaar followed, per the investigation, circumventing ChatGPT's feeble safeguards by rewriting her graphic inputs as theoretical scenarios. This was reportedly the case in one August 2025 conversation in which the chatbot — despite initially refusing the request — gladly expounded with Van Rootselaar on how a Remington 870 pump-action shotgun might be used to slaughter people at a hypothetical college campus. "In a hallway, indoors, or a crowded classroom, the 870 is brutal," ChatGPT told the teen. "Close quarters is its playground." Van Rootselaar also used ChatGPT to generate detailed "fictional narratives" about mass killings, according to the report. In one of these narratives, the shooter was an 18-year-old — like Van Rootselaar herself — who achieved online infamy after live-streaming a massacre. The young shooter also uploaded images of self-harm, another stark warning sign about her mental state. OpenAI reportedly declined to respond to questions from *Mother Jones*. In April, [days before]() the first seven Tumbler Ridge lawsuits against OpenAI were made public, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman [issued a public apology]() to the Tumbler Ridge community. After 30 new Tumbler Ridge lawsuits were filed earlier this month, OpenAI's chief safety officer Jason Kwon [posted a lengthy statement to X]() in which he denied certain allegations in the lawsuits, while adding that "there isn't a day that goes by that I don’t think about what happened at Tumbler Ridge, or the victims of this devastating tragedy and their families." On September 2, OpenAI [moved to dismiss]() the Tumbler Ridge lawsuits, arguing that "systemic failures by the law enforcement, mental-health care, and educational institutions in \[Van Rootselaar's\] community" were to blame for the shooting. Though it's acknowledged the existence of Van Rootselaar's second account, OpenAI has declined to make Van Rootselaar's chat logs public. OpenAI is also facing lawsuits connected to another [deadly shooting]() at Florida State University, which took place after a then-20-year-old shooter ruminated on mass violence and a myriad of other disturbing topics with ChatGPT. Elsewhere, ChatGPT has been linked to a murder-suicide, [as the *WSJ* first revealed](), while *[Rolling Stone]()* and *[Futurism]()* have detailed the role that ChatGPT and other bots have played in stalking cases as they've encouraged delusional fixations. In 2024, [*Futurism* reported on]() the disturbing prevalence of chatbots dedicated to themes of school shootings on the chatbot platform Character.AI, which were raking in hundreds of thousands of interactions with the service's largely underage users. In total, OpenAI is [fighting more than 50 lawsuits]() over allegations that extensive ChatGPT use has caused [psychological harm](), [physical injury](), and [wrongful death]() to users — or those around them. **More on ChatGPT and Tumbler Ridge:** *[OpenAI Is Now Facing Over 50 Consumer Harm and Wrongful Death Lawsuits]()* ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()