18-year-old woman identified as suspect in Canada school shooting

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have identified an 18-year-old woman as the suspect in a deadly school shooting in Canada.

Police said the 18-year-old woman with mental health issues killed her mother and stepbrother before attacking her former school.

The killer, whom police identified as Jesse Van Rootselaar, died by suicide after the shooting on Tuesday in Tumbler Ridge, a remote community of 2,400 people in the Pacific province of British Columbia.

Police revised the death toll down to nine, including Van Rootselaar, from the initially reported 10.

The commander of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia, Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald, said on more than one occasion, Van Rootselaar had been apprehended under the provincial Mental Health Act for an assessment.

“Police had attended that family residence on multiple occasions over the past several years, dealing with concerns of mental health with respect to our suspect,” McDonald said on Wednesday, February 11, 2026.

McDonald said Van Rootselaar, who was born male but began identifying as a female six years ago, had first killed her 39-year-old mother and 11-year-old stepbrother at the family home.

10 dead, 25 injured in Canada school shooting

She then went to the school, where she shot a 39-year-old female teacher as well as three 12-year-old female students and two male students, one aged 12 and one aged 13.

Police recovered a long gun and a modified handgun, Reuters reported.

Dozens were injured, and two severely wounded victims remain in the hospital.

Unlike the United States, school shootings are almost unheard of in Canada, and federal politicians initially struggled to maintain their composure.

“We will get through this. We will learn from this,” a visibly upset Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters.

Carney postponed a trip to Europe and ordered flags on all government buildings be flown at half-mast for the next seven days.

“Following yesterday’s tragic shootings in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., I have asked that Canada’s flag atop the Peace Tower, and across all government buildings, be flown at half-mast for the next seven days as our nation mourns with the community,” he wrote on X.

The Star