Tumbler Ridge students barricaded themselves in classrooms as Jesse Van Rootselaar opened fire
The serenity in the tiny, rural B.C. community of Tumbler Ridge seen on Tuesday afternoon was at sharp odds with the words being heard on the livestream broadcast.
Bright sunshine reflected from fallen snow surrounded by pines and leafless birch; it sent a long shadow of Trent Ernst, with the community newspaper, stretching far into his camera’s frame as he broadcast from outside Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.
“There is a report of an active shooter,” he said calmly. “As I was just about to go live, two cop cars just came zooming by towards the school and an emergency alert went out, so this is not a rumour. Very little is known about the situation right now.”
Inside the school, there was no sense of serenity. It was chaos, fear, confusion, and death.
Jarbas Noronha, who was teaching a grade 12 auto mechanics class with about 15 students, said a student came into the garage saying he had heard gun shots. That was quickly followed by the school’s principal, who shouted out “lockdown,” Noronha told The New York Times.
He and students barricaded the garage doors with metal benches.
“We were in the safest part of the school,” Noronha was quoted saying. “If someone tried to break in through the hallway door, we would run to the yard through the garage doors.”
A student described building a barricade at his classroom door using tables, as he and classmates mapped out routes for possible escape if the door was breached, even though there was uncertainty over the danger.
“For a while, I didn’t think anything was going on,” Darian Quist, 17, told CBC News. “It was definitely tense. I think we were all very nervous … trying to keep each other motivated and not fall into grief.
“But once people sent me some photos, at that point it set in what was actually happening.”
News quickly spread from the school into the community. Students called their parents, some called police, someone called Ernst.
“I talked to a certain parent who is here waiting, he got a call from his son who is sheltering in place in the gym, and he is just waiting to hear from his other kid, and is quite rightly nervous,” Ernst said on his livestream as he walked towards the school.
A public alert of the shooting was issued by the RCMP as Ernst was about to start his broadcast.
“This is about as breaking as breaking news gets here in Tumbler Ridge.
“There’s just a report of somebody with a gun. The suspect is described as female, brown hair, and wearing a dress.”
Police later identified the suspected shooter as Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, a biological male who began to transition to female about six years ago.
As he got closer, Ernst — the publisher, editor and reporter with the Tumbler RidgeLines — could see RCMP cruisers arriving and other emergency vehicles with flashing lights at the school that has about 160 students, from grades seven to 12.
“There are people emerging from the school. I’m going to see if I can zoom in … from this distance it is hard to see what exactly is happening.
“Another police car is pulling up to the school, kids are emerging.”
Photos of students being led out of the school with their arms in the air have since been published in media around the world.
Ernst said the roads around the school had been blocked by municipal cars: “Tumbler Ridge is a very small place, we only have five RCMP officers, so we couldn’t have police or emergency services blocking (roads).”
Ernst later said he had no idea how serious and emotional the incident he was capturing was.
“I wasn’t expecting anything to happen,” he said Wednesday.
He said he first heard of the shooting from a community member. He later got a message from his daughter, who was working at the YMCA daycare, that the facility was also on lock down and was sheltering in place with students from Tumbler Ridge’s elementary and secondary schools who had been moved to the community centre.
Quist and Noronha both said they hunkered down and waited about two hours until RCMP officers came and escorted them out of the school.
Then came tragic news.
Inside the school, the RCMP said, officers found a teacher and five students who had been killed. The suspected shooter was also found dead, from an apparent self-inflicted injury. One victim was found in a stairwell and the others in the library.
Two victims were airlifted to hospital with serious or life‑threatening injuries, a 12-year-old girl and a 19-year-old girl. Approximately 25 others were assessed and triaged at the local medical centre for non‑life‑threatening injuries, the RCMP said.
At another location in town, a home, two other people were found dead: Van Rootselaar’s mother and brother, who was 11. Police said they were the first to be killed.
On Wednesday, the RCMP said the school victims were a 39-year-old female teacher, and five students — three 12-year-old girls, and two boys, one aged 12 the other 13.
Before starting at the newspaper, Ernst said he worked as a substitute teacher at the school where the shooting took place.
“As somebody who has worked there, knows the people there and who knows a lot of the kids this is really hitting me hard, this is hitting the community hard,” he said.
Viewers thought he was making a joke when he said he had broken down five times that morning.
“It wasn’t a joke,” he said.
• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys
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