Tumbler Ridge shooter, U.S. suspect chats are shocking in ‘banality:’ expert

WARNING: Some of the details in this story are disturbing. Discretion is advised.

A 30-year-old Washington state resident has been charged in relation to the Tumbler Ridge School mass shooting in February, accused of encouraging the shooter to carry out the deadly violence.

Court documents show an online relationship between James Cody Bryant and Jesse Van Rootselaar began three years before the shooting, but in the six months leading up to it, there was daily contact.

Bryant is accused of giving the shooter money and advice and escalating the situation, along with allegedly promising to live stream the horrific event.

“I think what stands out, you know, I’ve been studying extremism for about 20 years, I’ve read through hundreds of attacker manifestos and hundreds of court documents, spoken to extremists myself,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, an associate professor at Queen’s University who specializes in extremism and radicalization.

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“And I think, what stands out with this complaint is the kind of banality of some of their discussion.”

Bryant “had been in repeated contact with the shooter, offering advice, sending money and even agreeing to livestream the horrific event,” said Neal Floyd, acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, on Tuesday.

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“Bryant had the information and ability to alert law enforcement, and even discussed that possibility with the shooter, but he chose not to. Instead, he encouraged and offered assistance to a murderer.”

Bryant and Van Rootselaar were born male, but both identify as female, according to authorities.

“They are literally talking, we mustn’t forget, of killing potentially dozens and thousands of people over months and months and kind of interspersed with that conversation is this kind of ordinary friendship and discussions of their shared trauma around their trans identities and transgender identities,” Amarasingam said.

“It’s clear that they’re genuine friends, but interspersed with all of that talk is this quite jarring plotting and planning of killing dozens of people and live-streaming it to the public.”

In the court documents on the day of the shooting, Bryant told Van Rootselaar that the live stream was on while Van Rootselaar was still at their house, but it went down about 10 minutes later.

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2:28 Alleged US accomplice to Tumbler Ridge shooter charged

“I think what you’re seeing here, and of course, only a snippet of it made it into the complaint that was released, but the normalization of that conversation, I think, is also quite surprising, right?” Amarasingam said.

“And so you keep, over time, this kind of casualness of the conversation around killing all of these people, I think, continuously moves that discussion forward.”

Amarasingam added that mass shooters often express a desire for their actions to mean something in order to gain attention for them.

In the court documents, Van Rootselaar asked Bryant if the deadly shooting would get them any fans and Bryant says, “I think you definitely would.”

“This is also an ongoing issue with social media and some of these platforms, is that notoriety becomes a kind of status in these organizations,” Amarasingam said.

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“And the audience doesn’t need to be that large necessarily, right? The approval, the emotional approval of one person can often carry a lot of emotional weight.”