VICTORIA — The school in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., where students were killed in a mass shooting in February will be torn down and rebuilt on a new site, Premier David Eby said Thursday.
He said the decision by the local school board came after it consulted survivors, victims’ relatives and the broader community about the “right path” for Tumbler Ridge Secondary School students.
“The direction of the community is clear, they wanted to go with a new school on a new site,” Eby told a news conference at the legislature in Victoria.
Five pupils and an educational assistant were killed at the school in the Feb. 10 attack, which came after shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar shot dead her mother and half-brother at their home. Van Rootselaar also fatally shot herself at the school.
“I want to thank the community for their heroism, for their courage, for their resilience, and look forward to working with them … on ensuring that the kids in Tumbler Ridge have a safe and comfortable and healing place to return to school,” Eby said.
He said the federal government would help fund the replacement of the school, and the school board would work with the community and experts on its design.
Eby said students would remain in portable classrooms for an “extended period,” but it would have been about the same whether a new school was built or the old one rehabilitated.
He said the new school would be built “as quickly as possible,” but did not give a firm timeline.
Asked about mental health supports, Eby said he had confidence that Tumbler Ridge Mayor Darryl Krakowka “feels that the health authority has done a very good job of ensuring the availability of mental health services, counselling supports for kids, teachers, families, others.”
While a coroner’s inquest into the killings has been announced, the government has not committed to a public inquiry.
But Eby said one would take place if the coroner’s probe and ongoing police investigation did not provide answers.
He acknowledged there were still many questions about the killings, including the origin of the guns used by Van Rootselaar, the role of the shooter’s interactions with OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, the role of mental health services and whether there was an opportunity for authorities “to have flagged, identified and otherwise, addressed” the situation.
“My commitment to British Columbians is that we will get answers to these questions. If for some reason, the police investigation or the coroner’s inquest is not able to get these answers for British Columbians, of course we would move to public inquiry to get those answers.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 7, 2026.
Wolfgang Depner, The Canadian Press
