B.C. sues OpenAI, says one call could have prevented Tumbler Ridge mass shooting

VANCOUVER – The British Columbia government has filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company OpenAI in California over the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., Attorney General Niki Sharma announced Monday.

Sharma said the province is seeking accountability from OpenAI and its decision-makers and to recover costs associated with the shootings in February that left eight victims dead, including five students at the local secondary school.

She said the company failed to warn police of concerning interactions between the shooter, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, and the company’s chatbot ChatGPT.

“OpenAI has confirmed that the conversation between ChatGPT and the shooter was so alarming that it triggered an internal review by OpenAI employees,” she said. “This threat was not reported to the RCMP and was subsequently dismissed.”

Sharma said provincial officials have asked to view the interactions between Van Rootselaar and ChatGPT, but OpenAI has refused to disclose them.

“We should all be asking them why,” she said. “We know in similar cases, AI chatbots have been found to have counselled the person to conduct the crime.”

OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman has said he was “deeply sorry” the company did not alert authorities, adding the shooter’s account had been banned in 2025.

The lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. district court in San Francisco lists Altman as an individual defendant, alongside the firm and other entities associated with it.

It says the deactivation of the shooter’s account did not address the risk of harm as Van Rootselaar continued to engage with ChatGPT through a second account.

“One telephone call to the RCMP could have prevented the tragedy,” it asserts.

Sharma said B.C.’s claim also alleges the company designed an “unsafe product.”

The lawsuit seeks a jury trial, accusing the defendants of negligence, “aiding and abetting a mass shooting,” and liability for having a defective product.

The B.C. government and the Tumbler Ridge school district are seeking “compensation for the not just foreseeable but known harm OpenAI inflicted, the damages that they incurred and are incurring, and injunctive relief to ensure that this tragedy does not happen again,” the lawsuit says.

Sharma said the province is pursuing specific damages, including reimbursement of the costs to build a new secondary school in the small community in northeastern B.C. after it was determined through community consultation that the building where the mass shooting took place would be demolished.

Survivors and witnesses, including pupils and staff at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, are separately suing OpenAI.

The Feb. 10 attack began with Van Rootselaar killing her mother and brother in their family home before moving to the school and killing five students and an educational assistant. She then fatally shot herself.

Sharma said laws and safety frameworks have not kept pace with AI technology and companies cannot be left to regulate themselves. 

She told a news conference in Vancouver that she had written to federal officials asking for changes to Canada’s Criminal Code to ensure AI companies can be held accountable for criminal conduct arising from their technologies.

“In any other circumstance, where a person aids, encourages, conspires to commit a criminal offence or is criminally negligent, they can be investigated, prosecuted and judged,” the attorney general said.

“There is no AI exemption to those criminal law principles.”

Sharma said the province filed its claim in California alleging that’s where OpenAI knew “serious things were happening in that chat” between Van Rootselaar and ChatGPT, but failed to report the situation to authorities.

She said filing in California, where many technology companies are headquartered, also offers potential to effect change in addressing safety concerns related to AI.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 21, 2026.