Tumbler Ridge shooting accused co-conspirator denied bail: U.S. judge<\/p>\n
Published 5:46 pm Wednesday, October 14, 2026<\/p>\n
The alleged Washington State co-conspirator in the fatal mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge has been denied bail.<\/p>\n
Accused James Cody Bryant, a Bellingham resident, was in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Washington courthouse in Seattle Tuesday (Oct. 13) for a detention hearing. Judge Mary Alice Theiler ordered Bryant to be detained and remanded in custody. Bryant is next scheduled for a preliminary examination on Oct. 20 at 1 p.m.<\/p>\n
Bryant was arrested Oct. 7 in Bellingham, Wash. and charged with conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country in connection with the Feb. 10 school shootings in the northeastern B.C. community.<\/p>\n
The charge against Bryant has not yet been proven in court.<\/p>\n
Officials first spoke to Bryant two days after the mass shooting, but it took this long to get to a charge as officials worked to get subpoenas and warrants, then sift through copies of the \u201cthousands\u201d of communications between Bryant and the shooter, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar.<\/p>\n
Acting United States Attorney Neil Floyd said Bryant allegedly had repeated contact with the shooter, whom Floyd refers to as \u201cJVR.\u201d Floyd alleges Bryant offered JVR advice, sent money and even agreed to livestream the shootings.<\/p>\n
According to Floyd, Bryant had the information and ability to alert law enforcement \u2014 even discussing that possibility with the JVR \u2014 but chose not to.<\/p>\n
Eight people were killed, including six children, in the Feb. 10 shooting in Tumbler Ridge. Van Rootselaar died of a \u201cself-inflicted wound,\u201d according to police.<\/p>\n
Two people, Van Rootselaar\u2019s mom and brother, were killed at their family home. The other six, five students and an educator, were killed at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.<\/p>\n
Floyd alleges that Van Rootselaar had a hard time starting a vehicle after shooting at the home, but got it going with Bryant advice and assistance \u201cso that JVR could proceed to the school and kill children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mike Herrington, the special agent in charge of the FBI\u2019s Seattle field office, said Bryant and Van Rootselaar allegedly met on the now-defunct Omegle video chatroom about three years before the shooting. He said the two developed a friendship over the period of six months before they began to focus on discussions of violence.<\/p>\n
Herrington said Bryant also allegedly agreed to record a livestream of the mass shooting and \u201cbroadcast in a way that would maximize notoriety for the shooter.\u201d<\/p>\n
That livestream was allegedly online for about 20 seconds before it was shut down.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout Bryant\u2019s misplaced loyalty and willingness to operate the livestream, we don\u2019t ultimately know if the shooter would have gone through with the crime,\u201d Herrington said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tumbler Ridge shooting accused co-conspirator denied bail: U.S. judge Published 5:46 pm Wednesday, October 14, 2026 By Lauren…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":933783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[903,49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-933782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933782","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=933782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}