Teen Suspect in Canada Shooting Had Turbulent Life Marred by ‘Nomadic’ Early Years

Days after a deadly mass shooting devastated a rural town in British Columbia, Canada, police are still searching for clues as to why the suspect, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, would have turned violent, and how she could have carried out her attack.

In Tumbler Ridge, a mining town of roughly 2,700 people, a picture of the teen’s unsettled life was emerging from police and court records and a family statement. Van Rootselaar went mostly by Jesse Strang, the maiden name of her mother, Jennifer Strang. Van Rootselaar was the name of her biological father, a man she barely knew after a difficult split between her parents. Even though her father lived in the same town, they never had much contact.

Van Rootselaar dropped out of school around four years ago, authorities said.

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Social media fuels gender dysphoria among children, says expert

Baroness Cass

Social media has misled children about the realities of transitioning, the expert who led a review into NHS child gender services has said.

Baroness Cass, whose work led to sweeping changes including a ban on puberty blockers, criticised the “unrealistic images and expectations” spread online.

She said social media had contributed to the rise in the number of cases of gender dysphoria. Children were not given enough information about “what transition would really mean and how hard it would be”, including intensive medical treatments and “sometimes quite brutal surgeries”, Cass said.

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‘Unbearable:’ Father of Tumbler Ridge shooting victim Emmett Jacobs mourns slain son

Matt Jacobs, the father of Tumbler Ridge shooting victim Emmett Jacobs, and two surviving children living at Jennifer Strang’s home, has released a statement after the horrific events in the northeastern B.C. community Tuesday.

“The pain I have been feeling from this tragedy is unbearable. I can’t even imagine to explain how lost I feel. I lost my little boy, a man’s pride and joy. Jennifer and I had our differences but she did not deserve this, none of them did. I couldn’t even begin to comprehend the news I had heard on Feb. 10,” the statement reads.

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ROBSON: Canada’s real failure at Tumbler Ridge wasn’t the shooting — it was everything before the first shot

My first column on Tumbler Ridge argued that Canada has a threat-detection problem, not just a violence problem. The subsequent days have only sharpened that diagnosis. As the official timeline firmed up and the reporting deepened, what emerges is not a neat “cause” story but a systems story: a rural community hit by a two-scene escalation, an emergency response that moved fast but arrived late in the only way that matters, and a national information ecosystem that struggled to stay accurate when accuracy was most needed.

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Canada trans shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar’s mom described him as sadistic — as twisted addicted to death videos revealed

A gun for a sadistic 12 year old?

Canada’s transgender school shooter was a sadistic 7-year-old, his own mother once said — and he grew more sinister in the months before the shooting as he became obsessed with twisted murder videos.

Jesse Van Rootselaar, an 18-year-old high school dropout, carried out the second worst school shooting in Canadian history Tuesday, first slaughtering his mother and stepbrother at home and then storming into Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where he killed six people and injured 25 more before turning the gun on himself.

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Tumbler Ridge transgender shooter ‘tried to kill his family before’

The teenager who murdered his mother and step-brother in a mass shooting in a Canadian town had tried to kill his family before, a neighbour revealed.

On Tuesday, Jesse Van Rootselaar opened fire at his home in Tumbler Ridge and then at a local school before turning the gun on himself.

Investigators have not yet established a motive for the attack that killed eight people, one of Canada’s deadliest gun incidents. A police spokesman told The Telegraph that they “might never be able to”.


Related …

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We must be free to speak about the scourge of trans violence

The massacre at Tumbler Ridge feels like the militant wing of grievance culture.

There was a double tragedy at Tumbler Ridge in British Columbia this week. The first was the shooting to death of five schoolkids and an education assistant in what ought to have been the sanctuary of their place of learning. The second is that the names and even the bloody fate of those innocents will not be long remembered. Why? Because they had the great misfortune of being murdered by a member of a celebrated minority. By an adherent to that most sainted ideology: transgenderism.

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What I Suffered Being ‘Transgender’

When I was 11, I began identifying as transgender. I had gone down a rabbit hole of websites and niche online forums. There I met a friend—an artist who was 14—whom I admired and looked up to.

We both felt different, out of place in society. Born 10 years earlier, we would have been called tomboys. Instead, we writhed under the pressure of the “female role.” The internet told us the logical conclusion of that struggle was to identify as boys.

I come from a broken home. While my mother and stepfather always loved me, my stepfather became severely disabled when I was 3, leaving me feeling as though I had to raise myself. I eventually reached out to my biological father around a decade later. When he and my stepmother saw my distress—and were told by a psychiatrist that this distress was related to my transgender identity—they began to consider the benefits of affirming me in my transition.


The author …

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Before Mass Killing, Mental Breakdowns and Online Violent Extremism

On Tuesday afternoon, Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, grabbed two firearms from her home and, the authorities in British Columbia said, killed her mother and 11-year-old brother. Then she traveled a mile to the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and killed five students and one educator before turning her weapon on herself.

The mass shooting, which also left two children injured with gunshot wounds, has sent shock waves across Canada, where such violence is rare, and has devastated the small rural community of 2,400 people.

An investigation of Ms. Van Rootselaar’s online life offers a chronicle of a young person’s gradual descent into mental health crises and radicalization into extreme violence.

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Jamie Sarkonak: What RCMP didn’t tell Tumbler Ridge when students’ lives were in danger

Eight innocents were shot dead in B.C.’s northeastern community of Tumbler Ridge on Tuesday; a girl is fighting for her life in hospital, and two dozen more have been injured. This tragedy is one of the worst ever seen in Canadian history — and as it unfolded, police gave the public incorrect information and did not correct themselves afterward.

“Suspect described as female in a dress with brown hair,” read the emergency alert notifying residents of the school shooter, who was later found dead.

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Tumbler Ridge Shooting: CBC degenerates raise eyebrows at Father’s use of He/Him pronouns to describe son

Biological father of Tumbler Ridge shooter offers ‘heartfelt condolences’ 

The biological father of the 18-year-old who killed eight people in Tumbler Ridge before turning a gun on herself Tuesday issued a statement Thursday night, offering his sympathy to the families of the dead and saying he was estranged from the shooter.

In his statement, Justin VanRootselaar refers to his child as Jesse Strang and uses he/him pronouns to describe her. According to police, Jesse Van Rootselaar was assigned male at birth and began transitioning to female about six years ago.

OMG!

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Children paid in NHS puberty blocker trial backed by Streeting

Children are being paid to take part in an NHS puberty blocker trial, The Telegraph can reveal.

Some 226 children who believe they are transgender will be given puberty blockers as part of an investigation commissioned by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, into their effects on the young.

The drugs, which stop the body’s natural development, were indefinitely banned by the Health Secretary after the Commission on Human Medicines said they posed “an unacceptable safety risk” to children.

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CityNews under fire for beauty-filtered image of transgender shooter

CityNews is facing criticism after viewers noticed what appear to be beauty filters on images of Tumbler Ridge transgender school shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar.

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A New Study Challenges the Mental-Health Claims of “Gender-Affirming Care”

A new study challenges the popular claim that medical interventions improve trans-identifying people’s mental health. Rather, the study argues, nonmedical factors like social support and coping style are far more important determinants of these individuals’ mental-health outcomes.

For years, doctors and medical associations have argued that patients with gender-related distress, including children, suffer from depression and suicidality and need access to “gender-affirming care” to relieve it. They presented this view as the scientific consensus, and that view has shaped policy debates about how readily these interventions should be offered and under what—if any—safeguards.

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