The action was filed in B.C. Supreme Court on March 9 against OpenAI and its spinoff ChatGPT on behalf of Cia Edmonds, 12-year-old Maya and her little sister Dahlia
Maya Gebala remains in intensive care in a Vancouver hospital. Photo by David Gebala /Facebook
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The mother of Tumbler Ridge mass shooting survivor Maya Gebala is suing a U.S. artificial intelligence company for not notifying police about the risks posed by killer Jesse Van Rootselaar.
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The action was filed in B.C. Supreme Court on March 9 against OpenAI and its spinoff, ChatGPT, on behalf of Cia Edmonds, 12-year-old Maya and her younger sister, Dahlia.
According to the lawsuit, in the summer of 2025 Van Rootselaar, then 17, opened a ChatGPT account in which she described “various scenarios involving gun violence over the course of several days”.
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It alleges that this led 12 monitoring staff at ChatGPT to identify Van Rootselaar’s inquiries “as indicating an imminent risk of serious harm to others” and recommended Canadian police be notified. This was escalated to company leadership who “subsequently rebuffed their employees’ request,” the lawsuit alleges.
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Instead, the account was closed, after which Van Rootselaar opened another.
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“The shooter used their second account to continue planning scenarios involving gun violence, including a mass casualty event like the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting, with ChatGPT, and to receive mental health counselling and pseudo-therapy from ChatGPT,” the lawsuit alleges.
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On Feb. 10, 2026, Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother in their Tumbler Ridge home, then walked to Tumbler Ridge Secondary where she killed five students and a teacher before killing herself.
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Tumbler Ridge shooting suspect Jesse Van Rootselaar’s home at 112 Fellers Avenue in Tumbler Ridge. Photo by Rob Brown/Postmedia
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Maya Gebala was critically injured and remains in hospital with a catastrophic brain injury and right-side paralysis, the lawsuit. Maya was attempting to lock a door to the library when she was shot.
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On Feb. 20, the Wall Street Journal reported the allegations made in the lawsuit surrounding Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT accounts.
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On March 4, OpenAI mastermind and billionaire Sam Altman met with federal AI Minister Evan Solomon and reportedly agreed to make a number of safety changes.
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The following day, Altman met with B.C. Premier David Eby and, according to Eby, made a promise to apologize to the victims of the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting. As of March 9, no apology has been made.
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In a statement, the legal firm representing Edmonds and her daughters said a planned coroner’s inquest into the mass shooting would likely involve a detailed analysis of Van Rootselaar’s medical and schooling records as well as a forensic analysis of her electronic devices.
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“The purpose of this lawsuit is to learn the whole truth about how and why the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting happened, to impose accountability, to seek redress for the harms and losses, and to prevent another mass shooting atrocity in Canada,” the statement read.
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OpenAI has 35 days to respond to the lawsuit.
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