Tumbler Ridge journalist says ‘people are looking for people to blame’ after mass shooting

Local journalist Trent Ernst speaks to the community reaction in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., following Tuesday’s mass shooting tragedy.

As details are still emerging about Canada’s deadliest school shooting in decades, one of the first people to arrive outside Tumbler Ridge Secondary School as the incident unfolded says the small northern British Columbia community is facing a reckoning.

“People are looking for people to blame,” says Trent Ernst, the publisher of the Tumbler RidgeLines website, who livestreamed the police response to the active shooter situation Tuesday. “And we’re seeing that happen already.”

Mounties have not indicated a motive for the mass shooting that left nine people dead, including the shooter, and more than two dozen others injured.

At a news conference Wednesday, police identified the suspected shooter as 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar.

“We do believe the suspect acted alone,” said Dwayne McDonald, deputy commissioner of the B.C. RCMP.

• Read more: Shooter’s mother, sibling among victims in Tumbler Ridge shooting. Live updates here.

Ernst says he arrived at the school grounds and began streaming video after receiving a call from a school superintendent.

“I could see the RCMP moving into and out of the building freely,” he told CTV News Your Morning Vancouver on Wednesday. “They weren’t going in as if there was a tactical operation going on. So I knew that whatever happened had already happened.”

The journalist initially assumed that a student had “shown up with a wooden handgun as a joke,” he says. “This is beyond the pale of anything that I could have imagined would happen here.”

Within hours of the shooting, Tara Armstrong, the MLA for Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream, wrote on social media that the killings were part of a growing “epidemic of transgender violence” in Western countries.

The RCMP deputy commissioner on Wednesday confirmed the suspect was described as male at birth but later transitioned to female. The suspect’s mother and half-brother were among the victims killed in the shootings.

“We have a history of police attendance at the family residence,” McDonald said. “Some of those calls were related to mental health issues.”

Condolences have poured in from across Canada and around the world, with Prime Minister Mark Carney, King Charles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joining a chorus of those offering consolation to the victims of the attack.

Ernst says the roughly 2,500 residents of Tumbler Ridge are “resilient,” but have many difficult days ahead.

“There are strong people here. There are people here who have deep connections to other people in the community,” he says. “But it’s going to be hard. I’m not gonna lie, it’s going to be very hard.”

A statement from the District of Tumbler Ridge echoed those sentiments and urged people to avoid online speculation.

“In the days ahead, we know this will be difficult for many to process,” the statement said. “Please check in on one another, lean on available supports, and know that Tumbler Ridge is a strong and caring community. We will get through this together.”

Mounties are expected to provide more details about the incident during a news conference late Wednesday morning.