Lawsuit alleges safety team flagged shooter’s ChatGPT use before attack
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco federal court on Monday, names OpenAI and its CEO as defendants and frames the February attack as a foreseeable outcome of decisions made inside the company. It is seeking damages to fund recovery efforts in the province and an order directing changes to the way OpenAI handles ChatGPT conversations that could lead to violence.
Nine people, primarily children, were killed in the shooting at a school in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. The shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, had been flagged by the company’s safety team after her conversations about gun violence, but the company did not alert police, according to the lawsuit.
Van Rootselaar’s interactions with ChatGPT were first flagged by the company in June 2025. Safety team members recommended contacting police, but Altman and other OpenAI leadership overruled them, the lawsuit says, citing OpenAI whistleblowers who spoke to the Wall Street Journal in the wake of the shooting.
The shooter’s account was deactivated, but she was able to get a new account and continue using the platform to plan her attack, the lawsuit alleges. After publication of the Wall Street Journal article, OpenAI said the account was flagged by systems that identify “misuses of our models in furtherance of violent activities,” but the issues did not meet its internal criteria for reporting to law enforcement.
Altman published a letter to the community saying he was “deeply sorry” OpenAI had not contacted law enforcement, the lawsuit says. He promised reforms, but never followed through, despite efforts from British Columbia’s attorney general to engage, according to the filing.
The lawsuit also describes the public costs the province has absorbed in the attack’s aftermath. The school where the shooting took place is in the process of being demolished, and the province has been forced to absorb the costs of a replacement school, mental health care and other effects of the shooting, according to the complaint.
A spokesperson for OpenAI, Drew Pusateri, called the Tumbler Ridge shooting an “unspeakable tragedy.” “OpenAI remains committed to working collaboratively with government and law enforcement officials, and continuing to advance our ongoing safety work,” Pusateri said in a statement.
The provincial lawsuit comes after more than 30 family members of victims and others affected by the attack filed lawsuits in California, accusing the company of opting out of a chance to prevent the shooting. Van Rootselaar, who was 18, shot her mother and stepbrother at home before killing an educational assistant and five students aged 12 and 13 at her former school on Feb. 10, according to police. She then died by suicide.
The provincial case is the latest in a series of filings against OpenAI in U.S. state and federal courts in recent months over claims that ChatGPT facilitated violence, including lawsuits related to a mass shooting at Florida State University last year. In June, Florida became the first state to sue OpenAI over safety risks, accusing the company of misrepresenting the safety of its ChatGPT platform, which the lawsuit said had harmed children by providing information to school shooters, offering guidance on self-harm and addicting young users.
OpenAI, which has denied the claims, has said it trains its models to refuse requests that could “meaningfully enable violence,” and notifies law enforcement when conversations suggest “an imminent and credible risk of harm to others.”