Oct 7, 4:00 AM
An American Accomplice Behind Canada’s AI-Planned School Shooting
The arrest of a Washington resident reveals that behind a high-profile digital tragedy lay direct human intervention.
When news broke in February that an eighteen-year-old had killed eight people in British Columbia—including six children—the public debate predictably seized upon a convenient scapegoat: artificial intelligence. The shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, had utilized ChatGPT to plan the attack, prompting lawsuits from victims' families and the provincial government against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman. Yet the neat narrative of a solitary killer guided entirely by an unfeeling algorithm has collapsed. Behind the digital screen stood an all-too-human accomplice operating from across the border.
Federal authorities in the United States have arrested James Codey Bryant, a thirty-year-old resident of Washington state. Charged with conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country, Bryant spent six months providing what the Department of Justice describes as technical advice and financial support to Van Rootselaar. The pair had connected roughly three years earlier on the video-chat service Omegle, quietly maintaining contact as the attack took shape.
Bryant’s assistance ranged from digital hygiene to explicit logistics. According to court documents obtained by CBC, he instructed Van Rootselaar in August 2025 to delete their chat history and later recommended using a virtual private network to evade detection when posting a shooting video online. He sent small sums of money for shoes and a lighter, and even agreed to livestream the attack—a promise federal investigators believe was critical to ensuring the shooter went through with the act.
Most striking was his intervention during the execution of the crime itself. After shooting her mother and half-brother in their family home, Van Rootselaar found herself unable to start her car. Bryant provided step-by-step instructions on how to turn on the engine, directly enabling her to drive to the school and execute the massacre.
Although Bryant occasionally attempted to talk Van Rootselaar out of the attack, he chose never to inform law enforcement. He will now be prosecuted in the US as an American citizen under an investigation led by the FBI alongside the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Silicon Valley’s safety protocols may well remain under intense legal scrutiny, but this arrest exposes a far older reality: algorithms only amplify what human malice inspires.
Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com
