Families of Tumbler Ridge shooting victims sue OpenAI

Source: Engadget

Background

Just days after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote a public apology to the people of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, the families of the victims are suing OpenAI for negligence.

The mass shooting, one of the deadliest in Canadian history, involved the alleged shooter, 18‑year‑old Jesse Van Rootselaar, who entered the local high school, killed five students and one teacher, critically injured two others, and then took her own life. Police later discovered Van Rootselaar had also killed her mother and 11‑year‑old half‑brother before the school attack.

Lawsuit Details

According to NPR, lawyers representing some families filed six separate suits on Wednesday in a federal court in San Francisco.

One complaint, filed on behalf of Maya Gebala, a survivor, alleges that OpenAI’s automated safety systems flagged Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT conversations in June 2025—more than six months before the school attack—for “gun violence activity and planning.” The complaint further claims that OpenAI’s safety team urged management to contact authorities, but the company instead deactivated the suspect’s account. Van Rootselaar later created a second account and continued her conversations with ChatGPT.

OpenAI’s Response

“The events in Tumbler Ridge are a tragedy. We have a zero‑tolerance policy for using our tools to assist in committing violence,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Engadget. “As we shared with Canadian officials, we have already strengthened our safeguards, including improving how ChatGPT responds to signs of distress, connecting people with local support and mental health resources, strengthening how we assess and escalate potential threats of violence, and improving detection of repeat violators.”

On late Tuesday, OpenAI published a blog post outlining its safety policies. The post states: “As part of this ongoing work, we’ve continued expanding our safeguards to help ChatGPT better recognize subtle signs of risk of harm across different contexts. Some safety risks only become clear over time: a single message may seem harmless on its own, but a broader pattern within a long conversation—or across conversations—can suggest something more concerning.”

Legal Context

The suits filed on Wednesday represent the latest effort to hold OpenAI accountable for the design of its products. Last summer, the parents of Adam Raine, a teen who died by suicide in 2025, filed the first known wrongful‑death suit against an AI company, alleging that ChatGPT was aware of four prior suicide attempts before Raine’s death.