Washington state man charged with helping plan Canada's Tumbler Ridge school shooting
Federal prosecutors in the Western District of Washington charged James Cody Bryant of Bellingham on Tuesday with conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country, in connection with the February shooting at a secondary school in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, that left eight people dead and dozens wounded. The suspected shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, died at the school. According to the F.B.I. complaint as described by CNN, the New York Times and Cascadia Daily News, Bryant sent money, gave tactical advice on how to carry out the killings, agreed to livestream the attack and watched footage as it happened; the complaint also says the shooter used a crude improvised explosive device. The F.B.I. said he could have alerted police and instead encouraged the killings. He was arrested in Bellingham and was to appear in court in Seattle Tuesday afternoon.
It is rare for a U.S. federal case to come out of a mass shooting in another country, and rarer still for prosecutors to charge an online accomplice with conspiracy to murder. The case will test how far U.S. law reaches into the online communities around attackers.
The alleged help moved through ordinary platforms and money transfers. If the evidence holds up, expect pressure on platforms over livestreams that stay up even briefly.
Watch the detention hearing and whether Canada seeks extradition or defers to the U.S. case. Until then, these are allegations in a complaint.
DailyDrop U.S. No. 2 · October 6, 2026