The suspect has been now been named, with first images showing the fresh face of the teen suspected of killing six and wounded a further 25 in the horror attack on Tuesday.
Jesse Van Rootselaar was identified as the Tumbler Ridge school shooter(Image: Facebook via news.com.au)
This is the first image of the teenage shooter believed to be behind one of the deadliest massacres in Canadian history. Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, is suspected of gunning down six people and wounding 25 others at a secondary school in British Columbia on Tuesday, February 12.
A haunting photograph shows a smiling Van Rootselaar posing with a rifle. It is unclear when the picture was taken.
Tuesday’s horror began at home in British Columbia, before Van Rootselaar even reached the school gates. Police say the teen first killed her own mother, 39-year-old Jennifer Strang, and then her 11-year-old stepbrother.
She is then thought to have headed to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where she unleashed bullets into the student cohort, killing three 12-year-old girls, two boys, aged 12 and 13, a 39-year-old schoolteacher, among others.
Panicked residents in the foothills of the Rockies were sent emergency text alerts on Tuesday afternoon, ordering them to “shelter in place” as an active shooter stalked the area. The alert described the suspect as a “female in a dress with brown hair.”
Canadian mass shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar seen holding a rifle in an undated photo.
(Image: Facebook)
Officers who stormed the building eventually found the shooter dead from a self-inflicted wound. Two firearms—a long gun and a modified handgun—were recovered at the scene. The attack marks the second-deadliest school shooting in Canadian history, surpassed only by the 1989 L’Ecole Polytechnique massacre in Montreal.
Authorities said Van Rootselaar, who identified as transgender and went by female pronouns, died by a self-inflicted gunshot on the school premises, bringing the death toll to nine.
Asked by reporters if Van Rootselaar was transgender, Deputy Commissioner McDonald said police were identifying the suspect “as they chose to be identified in public and in social media”.
“I can say that Jesse was born as a biological male who approximately six years ago began to transition to female and identified as female, both socially and publicly,” he added.