{"id":22004,"date":"2026-04-29T20:02:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T20:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/22004\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T20:02:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T20:02:19","slug":"families-of-canadian-school-shooting-victims-sue-openai-ceo-sam-altman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/22004\/","title":{"rendered":"Families of Canadian school shooting victims sue OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>April 29 (UPI) &#8212; The families of seven people killed or injured in a February school shooting in British Columbia, Canada, filed lawsuits against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, on Wednesday in a California court, saying the company failed to warn authorities about the shooter&#8217;s interactions with ChatGPT.<\/p>\n<p>Jessie Van Rootselaar killed five students and a teacher at a high school in Tumbler Ridge before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police said she killed her mother and stepbrother at home before going to the school, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/04\/29\/tech\/openai-tumbler-ridge-canada-shooting-lawsuits?source=sub_web_wall-met\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">CNN<\/a> reported. It was the deadliest school shooting in the country in decades.\n<\/p>\n<p>The separate lawsuits allege that OpenAI failed to alert local police or other authorities to the shooter&#8217;s conversations on gun violence scenarios with ChatGPT, even though the company&#8217;s safety team flagged them months before,the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c99l03k0ly4o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">BBC<\/a> reported. Last week, Altman apologized to the community for the lapse.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement,&#8221; he wrote in an open letter. &#8220;While I know words can never be enough, I believe an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and irreversible loss your community has suffered.&#8221;\n<\/p>\n<p>One of the lawsuits filed Wednesday replaces a lawsuit filed previously in Canada by Cia Edmonds, the mother of Maya Gebala, 12, who was in the hospital with gunshot injuries, CNN reported.<\/p>\n<p>OpenAI &#8220;made the conscious decision not to warn authorities&#8221; to protect the company, the Edmonds lawsuit alleges. It&#8217;s joined by lawsuits on behalf of the six people killed at the school: five students ages 12 and 13 and teacher Shannda Aviugana-Durand.<\/p>\n<p>Jay Edelson, a lawyer representing those filing the new lawsuits, said he will be filing more legal actions on behalf of the victims, families and community members, and requesting trials by jury.<\/p>\n<p>Edelson alleged that although the safety team recommended the conversations be reported to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, OpenAI&#8217;s executive leadership vetoed the decision, the BBC reported.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They did the math and decided the safety of the children of Tumbler Ridge was an acceptable risk,&#8221; the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n<p>An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement responding to the lawsuits that the company &#8220;has a zero-tolerance policy for using our tools to assist in committing violence&#8221; and that it has strengthened its safeguards against it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 29 (UPI) &#8212; The families of seven people killed or injured in a February school shooting in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[13432,157,134,1829,1129],"class_list":{"0":"post-22004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-openai","8":"tag-law-and-crime","9":"tag-openai","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-u-s"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}