A U.S. investigation has released detailed text exchanges alleging that the Tumbler Ridge school shooting was plotted by two trans-identifying males who took pains to decorate the murder weapons with transgender iconography and even select a “cute” outfit for the massacre.
In one exchange, killer Jesse Van Rootselaar, an 18-year-old male who identified as female, worried that a video livestream of the massacre might reveal his “ugly” voice.
To which his accused co-plotter said not to worry, and that it would only show a “pretty girl gunning (people) down.”
On Feb. 10, 2026, Van Rootselaar murdered eight people, including six children, before committing suicide in a mass shooting that predominantly targeted Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that Bellingham, Wash., resident James Cody Bryant, 30, had been arrested and charged in connection with helping to plan, encourage and finance the attack.
In an accompanying press conference, an FBI spokesman said that Bryant “identifies as a female.” Neighbours similarly described Bryant to local media as a trans woman who used “she/her” pronouns.
At the core of a 41-page criminal complaint filed Tuesday were several months of messages shared between Bryant and Van Rootselaar on the instant messaging service Discord.
Discord volunteered the information to the RCMP in the immediate wake of the massacre, and the Mounties shared it with FBI investigators.
The text exchanges reveal that Tumbler Ridge Secondary was predominantly targeted because the pair believed it afforded the best likelihood of murdering as many people as possible before law enforcement would be able to intervene.
“A place like Walmart or Costco would have a lot of people too, but it’s wayyy too wide and open. Plus I don’t wanna die in a shitty Walmart I’d rather a mall because at least that’s a nice place to buy things lol,” wrote Van Rootselaar in one text from Aug. 8, more than six months before the attack.
The messages represent the first publicly available documents showing that Van Rootselaar committed the massacre using firearms taken from a family gun safe.
The criminal complaint cites testimony from Bryant in stating that Van Rootselaar stole the firearms in the late summer of 2025, and was hiding them in “preparation for a mass shooting.”
Only after the massacre would it emerge that the RCMP had previously seized firearms from the family home over concerns about Van Rootselaar’s deteriorating mental health, only to return them at an unspecified point before the tragedy following a petition from the guns’ “lawful owner.”
Nevertheless, Canadian investigators have thus far refused to release the details of the weapons used in the massacre, with Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree saying it would be “irresponsible” given an ongoing investigation.
The text exchanges have Van Rootsellar sending an image to Bryant of a shotgun posed in front of a transgender flag. Bryant also wired money to Van Rootsellar to purchase transgender-themed stickers to decorate the firearms.
Bryant wrote in August 2025, “stickers would be so funny to be seen in photos of the incident.”
Images in the criminal complaint show a shotgun bearing a sticker depicting a planet bedecked in the transgender colours of pink, white and blue.
Van Rootsellar also donned fishnet tights to pose with a rifle featuring what appears to be a firearm suppressor carrying the colours of the trans flag.
The messages also show Bryant sending money for a pair of women’s shoes that Van Rootsellar would wear while perpetrating the murders.
“I want the cute shoes for when I do my violence,” Van Rootsellar wrote in September 2025, before complaining that the shoes might not be appropriate for the winter weather.
“I just am annoyed that like I’ll have to get wet feet probably.”
One recurring point of discussion was Van Rootsellar’s insistence that the attack be livestreamed in order to provide a visual archive of the victims’ “last helpless moments on earth … the last thing they say, and their last movements.”
Van Rootsellar’s main hesitation for doing so, however, was a concern about his “voice being ugly.”
“I contemplated like just not having audio on the livestream, letting it be video only so that I can yap as much as I want during,” wrote Van Rootsellar on Sept. 11, 2025. “But I feel like the sounds from victims and the gunshot noises are valuable to have caught in audio recording.”
According to the criminal complaint, Bryant began watching when Van Rootsellar initiated a livestream via cellphone just moments after murdering his mother and an 11-year-old half brother. However, the livestream went down before Van Rootsellar entered Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.
