Canada

OpenAI Sued Over BC School Shooting

Did OpenAI ignore warnings about a mass shooting or did the shooter's account not meet referral thresholds?

Published MAR 10

Story

Above: Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, on Feb. 12. Image credit: Paige Taylor White/AFP/Getty Images

The Facts

The family of 12-year-old Maya Gebala — who was critically injured in the mass shooting that killed nine people in Tumbler Ridge on Feb. 10 — filed a civil lawsuit against OpenAI in the B.C. Supreme Court on Monday.
Court House News
The Globe and Mail
Toronto Star
The lawsuit accuses the company's flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, of playing a direct role in enabling Jesse Van Rootselaar to plan and execute the mass shooting, and OpenAI of negligence, including failure to warn, negligent design and breaches of its duty of care.
Court House News
Evidencing this, the lawsuit claims that 12 OpenAI employees flagged the shooter's ChatGPT posts as indicating an imminent risk of harm to others and advised referring the activity to law enforcement, recommendations that the company leadership supposedly rebuffed.
Court House News
The allegation matched an account first reported by the Wall Street Journal, with OpenAI claiming it did not inform Canadian law enforcement about Van Rootselaar after banning their ChatGPT account in June 2025 because it did not meet its referral threshold.
The Wall Street Journal
Openai
In addition, the lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT provided Van Rootselaar with the "information, guidance and assistance" to plan the mass casualty event — including on what methods of attack and weapons to use — through both their original ChatGPT account, and a second one they opened later, which the lawsuit claims OpenAI failed to detect.
Court House News
OpenAI has yet to respond to the claims, but previously stressed in a letter to Canadian officials after the shooting that it would strengthen its police referral and repeat offender detection policies, adding that it would have referred the account banned in June 2025 if discovered today.
Global News
Toronto Sun
Openai

Sources Split

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The Spin

Narrative A

From the very beginning, OpenAI knew that a teenager was planning to carry out a mass shooting using its chatbot, yet made the deliberate choice not to warn the authorities. As a result of this disastrous decision, eight innocent people are now dead, and multiple others have suffered life-changing injuries. For this atrocity, OpenAI must face the consequences of its actions.

Court House News

Narrative B

When the account was originally banned, it did not meet the threshold for law enforcement referral based on the information available at the time. Now, however, the situation is drastically different. Since that tragedy, OpenAI has meticulously and tirelessly taken steps to address its past failures and strengthen its procedures to ensure that a catastrophe like this cannot happen again.