Tumbler Ridge Shooting Survivors File 30 New Lawsuits Against OpenAI

A student takes flowers to a makeshift memorial for the victims two days after a deadly mass shooting took place at a school, in the town of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., on Feb. 12, 2026.

Attorneys representing survivors of the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in B.C. say 30 new lawsuits are being filed against OpenAI, alleging that the ChatGPT creator’s leadership put the company’s public image ahead of community safety.

The lawsuits, filed on behalf of students and educators who were injured or traumatized by the Feb. 10 shooting that left eight victims dead, name artificial intelligence company OpenAI and its founder and CEO Sam Altman as defendants, Vancouver-based law firm Rice Parsons Leoni and Elliott LLP said in a statement.

The lawsuits are being filed in the Northern District of California, the same jurisdiction where seven previous lawsuits brought by families of shooting victims were filed.

The lawsuits stem from the actions taken by 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, who fatally shot his mother and brother in their family home before going to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School where he killed five students and an educational assistant before turning the gun on himself.

The lawsuits allege that OpenAI was negligent in failing to report the shooter’s ChatGPT activity to police before the attack.

“OpenAI’s own safety team identified the Shooter as a credible threat of imminent gun violence eight months before the attack, recommended that the company call the RCMP, and were overruled by OpenAI’s leadership,” the law firm said.

New Plaintiffs

The new lawsuits were filed by students and teachers who experienced the shooting, lawyer John Rice said, describing them as having witnessed gun violence, deaths, and emergency medical efforts.

The law firm also shared statements from plaintiffs describing their experiences, including a 13-year-old student who said he was forced to “play dead” among those who had been killed to avoid being shot.

Other plaintiffs include siblings who were separated during the shooting and each feared the other had been killed, as well as a Grade 7 teacher and her nephew who were in the same classroom during the shooting.

That teacher, Deidre Rushlow, had sent some of her students to the library with education assistant Shannda Aviugana-Durand shortly before the shooting began. Rushlow said she did not know at the time that Aviugana-Durand and five of her students would be killed.

When the gunfire began, Rushlow said she locked her classroom door and moved the students who remained in the room, including her nephew, beneath her desk.

“In the six months since my students and educational assistant walked out of my classroom to their deaths, I have thought about the meaning of justice,” she said in a statement. Rushlow also alleged that OpenAI officials who did not alert police had prioritized the company’s interests over the safety of the students.

“The decisions of those at OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, turned my safe and comfortable school into a killing field,” she said.

The law firm, which is working with U.S. co-counsel Edelson LC, said the lawsuits are seeking compensatory and punitive damages from OpenAI, as well as measures intended to prevent future mass shootings involving AI.

“If the allegations of fact are proven true in court, our clients and their families want justice,” Rice said. He added that the lawsuits seek OpenAI’s internal documents concerning its decision not to notify police.

OpenAI Response

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Open AI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon posted a statement about the lawsuits to social media.

“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,” he wrote on Sept. 2. “It’s a constant and sobering reminder of the important and incredibly difficult work that many people in my team do each and every day.”

He said the company has teams that work hard to establish privacy and security measures for more than one billion users while balancing that with standards and procedures for determining when to notify law enforcement of potential dangers.

Kwon also expressed his frustration regarding what he described as inaccurate claims made in the lawsuits about his teams and individuals who were not part of the process.

“It’s also completely untrue to say that the people at the center of these challenging decisions do not prioritize safety, or that there are ‘political’ or ‘public relations’ factors at play,” he said. “We’ve been approaching this litigation with respect for both the legal process and the families and victims of this tragedy, and we’ll continue to engage in good faith with that process.”

The company previously confirmed that it suspended Van Rootselaar’s account in June 2025 but said the conduct did not meet the “higher threshold required” for police to be contacted.

CEO Sam Altman issued an apology to the Tumbler Ridge community earlier this year and said the company has made updates to its protocols to prevent future tragedies.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/tumbler-ridge-shooting-survivors-file-30-new-lawsuits-against-openai-6082652?ea_src=ca-frontpage&ea_med=section-1