US man charged with offering help to Canada school shooting suspect

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - WASHINGTON — US authorities arrested a man in Washington state on Tuesday for allegedly providing help to a school shooter in Canada and offering to livestream the deadly attack last year.

Authorities said Jesse van Rootselaar killed two people at her British Columbia home on Feb. 10, 2026, and then five students between the ages of 12 and 13 and an educational assistant at Tumbler Ridge School, also using an improvised explosive device to damage the school.

James Cody Bryant, 30, was detained on a charge of conspiracy to murder people in a foreign country in connection with the shooting at Tumbler Ridge, according to the Department of Justice. The charge carries a penalty of up to life in prison.

Bryant allegedly met Van Rootselaar online years before the shooting and encouraged her to carry out the attack, federal prosecutors alleged in a criminal complaint released on Tuesday.

Bryant sat for an interview with agents from Homeland Security Investigations, according to the complaint, and he allegedly told investigators the two spoke every day in the lead-up to the shooting.

Bryant was in repeated contact with the shooter, offering technical advice, sending money and agreeing to live stream the event, law enforcement ⁠officials said.

“James Cody Bryant ⁠had the information and ability to alert law enforcement and even discussed that possibility with the shooter, but he chose not to, and he encouraged and offered assistance to a murderer,” Acting US Attorney for the Western District of Washington Neil Floyd told reporters.

Nine people, primarily children, died ⁠in the attack in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, in one of Canada’s worst mass shootings.

Van Rootselaar, 18, who had suffered a series of mental health problems, killed her mother and stepbrother at home before shooting dead a teacher and five young students at her former school in Tumbler Ridge, a settlement of around 2,400 in the Canadian Rockies, according to police. Van Rootselaar then died by suicide.

Bryant, who officials said they understood was also born a man but identified as ⁠female, agreed ⁠to live stream a feed of the attack and broadcast it “in a way that would maximize notoriety for the shooter,” Mike Herrington, FBI Seattle special agent in charge, said.

The live stream on Twitch was shut down after about 20 seconds, officials said.

“Without Bryant’s misplaced loyalty and willingness to operate the live stream, we don’t ultimately know if the shooter would have gone through with the crime,” Herrington said.

“We certainly know the shooter was concerned that not enough people would see the live stream without Bryant broadcasting it, and was depending on Bryant to amplify the live stream because the shooter did not have many followers on social media.”