Families of victims of one of Canada’s deadliest mass shootings have filed lawsuits against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging the company failed to warn authorities about the gunman’s threatening activity on ChatGPT months before the attack.
The lawsuits, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, were brought by relatives of victims of the Feb. 10 attack at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia.
The gunman, 18-year-old transgender Jesse Van Rootselaar, killed her mother and half-brother at their home before going to the school, where she killed six people and injured 27 others before taking her own life. Van Rootselaar was a former student there.
The lawsuits allege that OpenAI was aware of the shooter’s violent intentions. According to the complaint, employees flagged the account of Van Rootselaar eight months before the attack and determined it posed “a credible and specific threat of gun violence against real people”.
ChatGPT’s safety team reportedly urged CEO Sam Altman and other senior leaders to alert Canadian law enforcement at the time, but the company chose not to notify authorities and instead deactivated the account.
The families accuse OpenAI and Altman of negligence, wrongful death, product liability, and aiding and abetting a mass shooting. They allege that the company chose not to report the threat in part to avoid scrutiny over violent interactions on ChatGPT and to protect its business interests, including a potential initial public offering.
“The fact that Sam and the leadership overruled the safety team, and then children died, adults died, the whole town was ruined, is pretty close to the definition of evil to me,” said Jay Edelson, the lead lawyer representing the Tumbler Ridge plaintiffs.
The lawsuits also raise concerns about the design of OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, which plaintiffs describe as “defective,” alleging it may have contributed to harmful interactions. OpenAI previously acknowledged issues with the model being overly agreeable and rolled back updates.
Earlier this month, Altman issued an apology to the community of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, over the company’s failure to alert law enforcement about the ChatGPT account used by Van Rootselaar.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman issued an apology letter to the people of Tumbler Ridge. The apology is necessary, and yet grossly insufficient for the devastation done to the families of Tumbler Ridge. 1/2 https://t.co/bqHoqQ5j08
— David Eby (@Dave_Eby) April 24, 2026
“I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June,” Altman wrote. “While I know words can never be enough, I believe an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and irreversible loss your community has suffered.”
Three days before Altman’s letter, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier opened a criminal investigation into OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT provided “significant advice” to the suspect in an April 2025 shooting at Florida State University.
In a statement issued this week, OpenAI described the shooting as “a tragedy” and said the company has taken steps to improve its systems for detecting and responding to potential threats.
“As we shared with Canadian officials, we have already strengthened our safeguards, including improving how ChatGPT responds to signs of distress, connecting people with local support and mental health resources, strengthening how we assess and escalate potential threats of violence, and improving detection of repeat policy violators,” the company said.
The cases mark the first wave of litigation tied to the Feb. 10 attack. Edelson said the lawsuit will likely seek more than $1 billion in damages.
Lawyers for the families are also expected to file about two dozen additional lawsuits in the coming weeks.
