LLMHigh
OpenAI Allegedly Did Not Alert RCMP After ChatGPT Flagged Violent Chats Before British Columbia School Shooting
- Occurred
- Feb 10, 2026
- Published
- Feb 23, 2026
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
After the 02/10/2026 school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, OpenAI said a user later identified as the suspect, Jesse Van Rootselaar, had previously used ChatGPT to describe scenarios involving gun violence. Those chats were reportedly auto-flagged and reviewed and the account was banned, but OpenAI says it did not alert the RCMP because it allegedly did not present a credible, imminent threat; the company reportedly contacted police after the attack.
Developers
- OpenAI
- Chatbot developers
- Large language model developers
Deployers
- OpenAI
Harmed parties
- Tumbler Ridge Secondary School community
- Teachers
- Students
- Minors
- High school students
- Educational communities
Tags
- response
- syndicated
Classification
Category confidence: 90%
Severity confidence: 85%
Rationale: ChatGPT flagged violent content but failed to alert authorities before a school shooting, raising liability and safety concerns.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8