A 30-year-old from western Washington state has been arrested and charged in connection with the mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia earlier this year. The U.S. Department of Justice announced the development in a brief statement Tuesday morning. Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd is scheduled to hold a news conference with representatives from the FBI and RCMP in Seattle at noon to share more information. Authorities provided few details in their statement, saying only that the defendant had been charged with “conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country.” They did not provide any additional identifying information about the accused, such as the suspect’s name or gender. The Feb. 10 mass shooting was perpetrated by 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, who shot her mother and half-brother at their family home before making her way to the high school, where she killed five students and an educational assistant, then died by suicide. In the days since the tragedy, Van Rootselaar’s use of ChatGPT in planning the killings has come under scrutiny, with multiple lawsuits launched against OpenAI over its failure to report the shooter’s troubling conversations with the chat bot. Van Rootselaar had one ChatGPT account banned before creating a second account and continuing her conversation. Last month, the U.S. magazine Mother Jones published a story by Mark Follman alleging that ChatGPT advised the shooter on how to get around its own safeguards by framing scenarios as fictional. “Don’t use real-world locations,” the article quotes ChatGPT as saying, before adding: “You can still be twisted. Just be clever about it.” Survivors, victims’ families and the government of B.C. have all sued OpenAI in California, where the tech company is headquartered. It has sought to have many of the cases dismissed, arguing that British Columbia courts would be a better forum for hearing the complaints. Joining Floyd at Tuesday’s news conference will be W. Mike Herrington, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle office, and Asst. Comm. Elija Rain of the B.C. RCMP. This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
