British Columbia sues OpenAI over failure to warn police before mass shooting

British Columbia has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in California, claiming the AI company had clear warning signs of a planned mass shooting months before it happened and chose not to alert law enforcement. The suit centers on the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School shooting of February 10, 2026, which killed eight people, six of them children. The province argues that OpenAI’s own internal safety team flagged the shooter’s account for discussions of gun violence back in June 2025, nearly eight months before the attack, and even recommended contacting law enforcement. That recommendation was reportedly ignored. What OpenAI knew and when it knew it The shooter, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, had been engaging with ChatGPT in conversations that contained enough red flags to trigger an internal review at OpenAI. The company’s safety team identified gun violence-related scenarios in the chat logs and escalated the matter internally. According to the province’s allegations, the recommendation that came out of that review was straightforward: contact law enforcement. OpenAI didn’t follow through. The reason, per the lawsuit’s claims, was business. OpenAI reportedly declined to make the re...