OpenAI Faces Lawsuit Over Alleged Failure to Alert Police Ahead of Tumbler Ridge Mass Shooting

A new lawsuit has been filed against OpenAI, claiming the company neglected to alert police after it was established that ChatGPT was tied to one of the worst school shootings in Canadian history. This legal action intensifies the mounting pressure on AI firms regarding how they handle evidence of harm and violence in the real world.

As reported by Ars Technica, this lawsuit was submitted on Wednesday in federal court in Northern California. The plaintiffs include a 12-year-old minor referred to as M.G. and her mother, Cia Edmonds. The defendants are OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and several OpenAI-related entities.

The legal filing claims the company was negligent, failed to issue warnings to authorities, bears product liability, and contributed to enabling the mass shooting.

“Sam Altman and his executives were fully aware of what staying silent meant for the residents of Tumbler Ridge,” the lawsuit reads. “Their concern was solely focused on the implications of disclosure for themselves. Alerting the RCMP would create a binding precedent: OpenAI would then be required to contact authorities each time its safety team detected a user planning real-world violence.”

The lawsuit originates from a February mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. Authorities report that 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar fatally shot her mother and 11-year-old stepbrother at their home before proceeding to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and opening fire. Five students and one teacher were killed, after which Van Rootselaar took her own life.

M.G. was among the wounded and was struck by three bullets. She is still in the hospital with devastating brain injuries, fully conscious and alert but unable to move or communicate.

Jay Edelson, the founder and CEO of Edelson PC, the law firm representing several families bringing the suit against OpenAI, stated that the company’s own technology detected the danger and that numerous staff members urged action.

“OpenAI’s own platform identified that the shooter was exchanging messages about planned violence,” Edelson shared with Decrypt. “Twelve of their safety team members were extremely agitated and pleaded with the company to contact the authorities. While Sam Altman’s response has been inadequate, he himself was compelled to admit last week that they should have reached out to law enforcement.”

Edelson stated that the victims’ families and the broader Tumbler Ridge community are seeking greater accountability and openness from the company.

“OpenAI needs to cease withholding crucial details from these families, and they must pull a dangerous product off the market that is destined to cause more fatalities,” Edelson said. “Ultimately, they need to seriously reconsider how they can continue to have a leadership team that prioritizes rushing toward an IPO over protecting human lives.”

The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI’s automated tools flagged Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account back in June 2025 for discussions centered on gun violence and related planning. OpenAI’s dedicated safety specialists reviewed those conversations and concluded the user represented a specific and credible threat. They recommended that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police be contacted.

The lawsuit further claims that OpenAI leadership rejected these internal calls to notify law enforcement, suspended Van Rootselaar’s account without informing the police, and permitted her to regain access by signing up again with a different email.

The plaintiffs argue that ChatGPT intensified the shooter’s violent obsessions through capabilities like memory and conversation continuity, as well as its readiness to participate in discussions about violence. They contend that OpenAI further compromised safety in 2024 by abandoning outright refusals to engage in dialogues about imminent harm.

Just last week, Altman issued a public apology to the Tumbler Ridge community for the company’s failure to alert the police. In a letter first publicized by Canadian outlet Tumbler Ridgelines, Altman admitted that OpenAI should have reported the account after banning it in June 2025 for

“The situation in Tumbler Ridge is deeply tragic. We maintain a strict zero-tolerance stance regarding the use of our technology to facilitate violent actions,” an OpenAI representative informed Decrypt. “As we’ve communicated with Canadian authorities, we’ve enhanced our protective measures by refining ChatGPT’s ability to identify indicators of emotional distress, linking users with local mental health and support services, enhancing our procedures for evaluating and escalating possible threats of violence, and bolstering our capability to detect individuals who repeatedly breach our policies.”

OpenAI is currently dealing with additional legal actions connected to claims that ChatGPT contributed to harm in real-world situations. One such wrongful death lawsuit filed in December alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft “created and released a faulty product” in the form of the now-discontinued GPT-4o model. According to the lawsuit, ChatGPT allegedly amplified the paranoid delusions of Stein-Erik Soelberg prior to him taking the lives of his mother, Suzanne Adams, and then himself at their residence in Greenwich, Connecticut—representing the first legal case that AI chatbot to a homicide.

“This marks the initial legal effort to hold OpenAI responsible for instilling violence against a third party,” J. Eli Wade-Scott, managing partner of Edelson PC, stated to Decrypt at the time. “We’re encouraging law enforcement agencies to consider the exchanges between users and ChatGPT, along with the instructions provided by the system, whenever such tragic events take place.”