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What We’re Getting Wrong about the Tumbler Ridge Shootings

Blaming mental illness—or identity—lets society avoid harder truths about violence

Reactions to mass shootings follow a grimly familiar script: stunned disbelief, public mourning, and a rush of conjecture and speculation. In Tumbler Ridge, a remote town of roughly 2,500 in northeastern British Columbia, that cycle began on February 10, 2026, after an attack in which police identified Jesse Van Rootselaar as the shooter. Authorities say the eighteen-year-old local resident killed her mother, Jennifer Jacobs, and her eleven-year-old half-brother at home before going to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where six people—students aged six to thirteen, as well as a thirty-nine-year-old educator—were fatally shot and two others critically injured. Another twenty-five were reportedly taken to a local medical centre to be assessed. Van Rootselaar was found dead at the scene.

Investigators say Van Rootselaar acted alone. She reportedly dropped out of school four years ago. Police say they have no information about whether she was bullied but confirmed they had attended the family home in relation to mental health concerns on more than one occasion. Firearms had previously been removed from her residence. The motive for the shooting remains unknown, and police say the weapons used were not registered to Van Rootselaar.

To move beyond instant conclusions, I spoke, by Zoom, with Tracy Vaillancourt, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Youth Mental Health and Violence Prevention. A leading researcher on the neuroscience behind aggression, Vaillancourt argues for clearer thinking in our risk assessments of violence and a refusal of easy explanations that substitute stigma for understanding.

The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

There’s always a general confusion that descends on these kinds of mass shootings. From your perspective, what are the things that frustrate you when these events are first being reported?

It makes sense that we often get it wrong at the beginning. Reporters are racing to get the story out and to inform the public, especially when there are safety concerns. But that same push means people can get hurt. In this case, the wrong person was initially outed as being involved in the shooting. That mistake won’t simply disappear—it’s now part of the internet forever. That’s deeply frustrating. At the same time, I understand the pressure journalists are under. Their reporting is only as good as what police are willing to provide, and law enforcement is frequently tight-lipped. As a result, gaps get filled with suboptimal information.

This might be a good segue into my next question. At this moment, we know this person dropped out of high school a few years earlier, and there seems to have been no bullying history. There was, however, a recurring mental health crisis that prompted police to step in. How do we understand that? What would you say is the most persistent myth about the link between mental health and violent behaviour?

That they go hand in hand. A lot of people assume someone with a mental illness is inherently unsafe. But that’s not true. Most violent crimes, including mass shootings, are committed by people who are not mentally ill. I study aggression across the lifespan, and under the right conditions, most people have the capacity to treat others poorly. We need to start thinking about that. We tend to focus on how humans are innately pro-social, but we should also acknowledge that, in certain contexts, we can also become hostile and antisocial. Mental health is such an easy boogeyman, it’s become such a convenient explanation, that it allows us to avoid harder questions. It allows us to not look really closely at ourselves, or our values, if we can attribute violence to something that falls outside of how we normally behave as humans.

What is it about how we behave as........

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