‘Heroes, quite frankly’: Mounties drew the Tumbler Ridge shooter's fire away from students toward themselves
Their job was to draw the shooter’s gunfire.
Mounties who responded to the deadly mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School on Tuesday were likely scared and full of adrenaline, but they did what their training prescribes, according to West Kelowna-Peachland MLA Macklin McCall, the Conservative party’s critic for Public Safety, and a former RCMP officer with two decades of policing under his belt.
“Those RCMP officers from the local Tumbler Ridge RCMP detachment are heroes, quite frankly,” McCall said Thursday.
“Those officers responded in 120 seconds … to an active threat at the school.”
Their goal: to get a shooter to stop firing at civilians and turn and start engaging with police.
“That’s literally what happened here,” McCall said.
“The officers were getting shot at, actually. So, the shooter started engaging with the police officers and no officer was injured. And then the shooter, once facing the police officers, ended up taking their own life.”
Police learned about the school shooting on Feb. 10 around 1:20 p.m. local time. Mounties later identified the shooter as 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, a transgender female who lived in Tumbler Ridge.
Less than 24 hours later, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald told reporters “police did not return fire,” after “rounds were fired in their direction.”
Within minutes of Mounties arriving at the school, Van Rootselaar “was located deceased with what appeared to be self-inflicted gunshot wound,” McDonald said.
Police recovered a long gun and a modified handgun at the scene, he said.
Eight people were killed by the shooter, including his mother and stepbrother at the nearby home they shared with Van Rootselaar.
Two Mounties from Tumbler Ridge’s five-man detachment, which is only about two blocks from the school, were first to respond, McCall said.
“It is my understanding that, immediately, there was only two officers,” McCall said.
“You don’t wait for back-up. You just go in…. If they aren’t going to go in, who’s going to? That’s the thing with police, they know sometimes you might have to go into a scene where you might not walk away from that scene, but you’re the only person there. That’s your job. You have to go in to protect the people and save lives.”
That’s a tactic that changed, he said, after the April 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, where two Grade 12 students murdered 13 classmates and one teacher.
“I’ve done the active shooter training that the RCMP puts on,” said McCall, who left the RCMP in November 2023. “You go in immediately; you don’t wait.”
They “used to do that, back in the day,” he said. “You’d wait for back-up and go in. Well, if there’s an active threat, you go in now, even if you’re by yourself.”
In cities, police might have immediate back-up, he said. “But if you’re in a place like Tumbler Ridge, you may be going by yourself.”
Waiting for help from other officers isn’t pragmatic. “In a place like Tumbler Ridge, they could be 45 minutes away on a highway crash. You can’t wait that long.”
A spokesman for the RCMP said the officers involved were Sgt. Bill Hughes (21 years of service), Cst. Jonathan Kohut (8 years of service), Cst. Tyler Noon (11 years of service) and Cst. Nick Gachter (5 years of service).
“These members acted with immeasurable bravery in the face of extreme violence while surrounded by unfathomable trauma,” S/Sgt. Kris Clark said in a statement.
“After such a dynamic, and traumatic event, our officers are debriefed to account for their evidence, provided resources to ensure they are appropriately cared for, and then released them from duty to decompress, process and recover.”
The Mounties who approached the shooter inside the school Tuesday in Tumbler Ridge were “tremendously courageous,” McCall said.
“These officers are Canadian heroes, because, make no mistake, if (they hadn’t employed) their tactic of going in and getting that shooter to engage them rather than shoot more innocent people in the school, the number would have been higher than it is today.”
The immediate response comes from cops on the beat.
“It’s the officer driving around in your community in the marked police car saying ‘hello’ to the kids and stuff — that’s the officer in an active shooter situation that’s going to have to deal with it. It’s not going to be the (Emergency Response Team). That’s why they changed those tactics because they need that immediate response.”
British Columbia RCMP refused an interview request Thursday for any of the Mounties first on the scene at the school shooting. “Given the traumatic nature of the recent events, our focus remains on supporting our officers,” the force said in an email. “We will not be participating in interviews at this time.”
Local Mounties have been relieved by the force, McCall said. “They’re now being covered by other British Columbia E Division resources that have been brought in.”
Peace River South MLA Larry Neufeld said Thursday he was on the phone with a constituent who was in a building beside the school when the shooting unfolded.
“They were very impressed by the visual presence and the absolute incredible speed at which it happened,” Neufeld said.
He’s sure the quick actions of police saved lives that day in the 160-student school.
“I am exceedingly pleased with their response,” Neufeld said. “Without the superior response of the RCMP, I am fearful that yes, it could have been worse.”
He described an emotional moment shaking a local Mountie’s hand after the shooting, while looking him straight in the eye, to thank him for the force’s actions. “There was no verbal communication whatsoever, but it said more than a thousand words.”
Federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree told reporters late Wednesday that the RCMP’s “efforts helped save so many lives.”
Anandasangaree thanked the RCMP officers involved, as well as their leaders. “These men and women in uniform serving the RCMP each and every day in small communities and large cities protect us … in unimaginable ways while sacrificing their own mental health and their own wellbeing. We’re all better off for their service.”
Bob Zimmer, the M.P. for Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies, said Thursday that if police hadn’t arrived quickly, more people could have died. “As bad as it was, it could have been much worse.”
Some of the officers who reacted to the shooting “are struggling right now,” Zimmer said.
“Just ask your readers to keep praying for Tumbler Ridge. We appreciate the prayers from Canadians across the country.”
The officers who first approached the shooter “were very brave and are rightly called heroes,” Irvin Waller, a professor emeritus of criminology at the University of Ottawa, said Thursday.
But questions linger about the mass shooting, said Waller, the author of Science and Secrets of Ending Violent Crime.
“We need to know whether there was some negligence or some need for policy change,” he said.
“We know (the shooter) had just come back from mental health treatment in Prince George. We know that the RCMP had seized guns from (his home) and an unspecified person had got them back. I think people are going to be looking very much at the mental health controls and the gun controls.”
There should be a public inquiry into the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting, Waller said, similar to the one that took place after the April 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting that left 22 people, including a pregnant woman, dead.
“I think there are going to be lessons to learn from it,” he said.
“The Mass Casualty Commission, which I see as a sort of a bible, they did an incredibly good job of looking at what actually happened and what the RCMP needed to improve,” Waller said. “They talked about public health strategies that tried to stop these sorts of events developing.”
Zimmer agreed a public inquiry should be held at some point.
“I think that will come,” Zimmer said. “Right now we’re just grieving with the community…. They’re going to need some help to see the light again.”
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