{"id":526717,"date":"2026-03-10T11:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T11:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/526717\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T11:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T11:48:11","slug":"family-of-tumbler-ridge-shooting-survivor-sues-openai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/526717\/","title":{"rendered":"Family of Tumbler Ridge shooting survivor sues OpenAI"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Tumbler Ridge family, whose daughter was critically injured in the Feb. 10 shooting in the small community, is suing tech giant OpenAI.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Eight people were killed and two others, including 12-year-old Maya Gebala, were hurt in the tragedy. Gebala was trying to lock the library door to protect other students when she was injured.<\/p>\n

Cia Edmonds and David Gebala, Maya\u2019s mother and father, said their daughter was struck in her neck and in the head, just above her left eye, when shooter Jesse VanRootselaar opened fire at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School on Feb. 10.<\/p>\n

VanRootselaar had gone to the school after killing her mother, Jennifer Strang, and 11-year-old half-brother, Emmett Jacobs, at their family home in northeastern B.C.<\/p>\n

Gebala remains at BC Children\u2019s Hospital. On March 7, her mother said that doctors removed her breathing tube<\/a>, but said that she is fighting every day and starting to look more like herself.<\/p>\n

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OpenAI said on Feb. 26\u00a0 it would enhance its police referral and repeat offender detection practices<\/a>, among other new safety measures, after it did not flag the Tumbler Ridge shooter\u2019s ChatGPT activity to police last summer.<\/p>\n

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The company, which said it disabled VanRootselaar\u2019s account in June over \u201cviolent\u201d activity, said in a statement that it had also discovered a second ChatGPT account linked to her name after the shooting, despite a system that flags repeat policy offenders.<\/p>\n

OpenAI ultimately alerted the RCMP to the shooter\u2019s ChatGPT activity after the mass shooting on Feb. 10.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Click<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t0:49
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOpenAI agrees to safeguards in wake of Tumbler Ridge shooter not being flagged to police\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Last Thursday, Premier David Eby said the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is \u201cprepared to apologize\u201d to the Tumbler Ridge community<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMore on Crime
\n\t\t\tMore videos\n\t\t<\/p>\n

Now, the Gebala family wants to uncover the truth about how and why the shooting happened, establish accountability and help prevent another mass shooting.<\/p>\n

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The civil suit is being filed on behalf of Maya, her sister Dahlia and Edmonds.<\/p>\n

\u201cApproximately 12 employees of the OpenAI Defendants identified the Gun Violence ChatGPT Posts as indicating an imminent risk of serious harm to others and recommended Canadian law enforcement be informed,\u201d the civil suit claims.<\/p>\n

\u201cConcerns regarding the Gun Violence ChatGPT Posts were subsequently escalated to leadership,\u201d which chose \u201cto ban the Shooter\u2019s first OpenAI account\u2026 rebuffed their employees\u2019 request to contact Canadian law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suit also alleged that OpenAI \u201cfailed to detect and ban the Shooter\u2019s second OpenAI account,\u201d which was used \u201cto continue planning scenarios involving gun violence, including a mass casualty event.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suit also claims that OpenAI \u201ctook no steps to implement age verification or parental consent procedures\u201d and accuses the defendants of \u201cknowingly and intentionally permitting ChatGPT to provide pseudo-psychological treatment to the Shooter\u201d and that \u201cChatGPT equipped the shooter with information, guidance and assistance to plan a mass casualty event like the Tumbler Ridge Shooting.\u201d<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s revenue in 2025 was US$20 billion.<\/p>\n

It has not yet been served with the lawsuit and therefore has not responded to the allegations, which remain unproven.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tumbler Ridge family, whose daughter was critically injured in the Feb. 10 shooting in the small community,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,2169,75,278,190488,190601,348],"class_list":["post-526717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-crime","tag-entertainment","tag-openai","tag-tumbler-ridge","tag-tumbler-ridge-school-shooting","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}