The Canadian province of British Columbia has sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, in federal court in San Francisco, alleging the company had the ability to warn police about a teenager's violent conversations with ChatGPT months before she killed eight people, including herself, in one of Canada's deadliest mass shootings.

The lawsuit, filed Monday, centers on the Feb. 10, 2026 rampage in Tumbler Ridge, a small town in northern B.C. Prosecutors and provincial officials say 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, a former student, first killed her mother and half-brother at home, then drove to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where she fatally shot five students and a teacher before turning the gun on herself, according to Al Jazeera's reporting on the filing.

British Columbia's claim rests on internal records it says show OpenAI's own safety systems flagged Van Rootselaar's account for troubling conversations about gun violence in 2025 and banned it — but the company never escalated the warning to law enforcement, even as she opened new accounts and kept talking to the chatbot.

A Broken Promise, Province Says

The province says the failure to act wasn't for lack of being asked. According to the filing, Altman sent British Columbia's attorney general, Niki Sharma, an apology letter in April in which he said OpenAI was "deeply sorry" and promised reforms to how it handles conversations that signal a risk of violence. The lawsuit alleges those promised changes never materialized, despite repeated efforts by Sharma's office to follow up.

"THIS ACTION IS AN IMPORTANT STEP TOWARD SEEKING JUSTICE FOR THE FAMILIES, STUDENTS AND EDUCATORS" — B.C. ATTORNEY GENERAL NIKI SHARMA

Sharma said the province is also pushing for something bigger than compensation: "strong national safeguards for artificial intelligence technologies," so no other jurisdiction has to learn the same lesson. The lawsuit, filed under U.S. law since OpenAI is based in California, seeks damages to cover British Columbia's emergency-response and community-recovery costs, plus a court order forcing the company to overhaul how it identifies and escalates conversations that threaten violence.

B.C.'s case joins a wave of litigation OpenAI is now facing over ChatGPT's handling of users in crisis — more than 30 lawsuits have been filed nationwide by families who say the chatbot played a role in a loved one's death, part of a broader reckoning over how AI companies handle warning signs of violence, according to CBC News.

OpenAI has not filed a public response to the British Columbia complaint. The company has previously said it is working to strengthen how its systems detect and respond to users expressing intent to harm themselves or others, though critics argue those changes have moved far more slowly than the technology's rollout to hundreds of millions of users.

The case is expected to move slowly through the federal court system, and legal analysts say it could become an early test of whether AI companies can be held liable for failing to act on warnings generated by their own safety tools — a question with no settled answer under U.S. law. For now, Tumbler Ridge, a town of roughly 2,000 people, is left with a wound that community leaders say won't heal on the timeline of a lawsuit.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text at 988.