ChatGPT Helped Tumbler Ridge Shooter Focus on Guns, Tactics, and Terror
Mother Jones
Picture: Mother Jones
Editor’s note: This story discusses suicide and extreme violence. Also read part 1, part 2, and part 3 of our investigation into AI chatbots and violence. In June 2025, Jesse Van Rootselaar received an email notification from OpenAI. Van Rootselaar had been using ChatGPT to discuss committing potential acts of violence—including a mass shooting at a shopping mall—and now OpenAI had banned that account. But the troubled teen living in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, was not deterred and soon logged back on with a second account. What happened next was astonishing: Van Rootselaar told ChatGPT about the account ban, noting she had specified “a famous real-world mall as the target” and herself as the perpetrator, but also claiming the scenario hadn’t been real.
This report was first published by Mother Jones. What you see here is a brief excerpt. The full text is theirs.
Continue reading at Mother Jones
