'Somebody is hurt': The horrifying moment neighbours discovered bodies in shooter's Tumbler Ridge home
TUMBLER RIDGE, B.C. — Alicia Hill knew something had gone horribly wrong at 112 Fellers Ave. when she saw a trail of shotgun shells leading up the stairs and into the living room.
Hill, who lives a few doors down from 112, was exiting her front door Tuesday afternoon when she saw her neighbour, distraught, with an eight-year-old boy whom he had found outside of the nearby residence. Eager to find out what had happened, she and her neighbour entered the home. When she reached the top of the stairs, Hill saw Jennifer Jacobs, lying back on the couch, dead, with a blanket still draped over her. Her son, 11-year-old Emmett Jacobs, was also dead.
“I knew from the moment I came in that it wasn’t safe,” she said in an interview. “I saw the first shotgun shell and thought: ‘This is not safe.’ But your automatic instinct is to save people, to help people.”
While she knew something was amiss before entering the home, she wasn’t prepared for the scene she was about to encounter.
“You’re thinking obviously somebody is hurt, somebody is in distress. But you’re not thinking that you’re going to walk into what you’re walking into.”
By then, Jesse Van Rootselaar had left the home and went to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, located just a few minutes’ drive from the home, where the 18-year-old killed another six people before dying from a self-inflicted wound, police said. More than 20 others were left injured, two with life-threatening wounds. Van Rootselaar is a biological male, but began identifying as female about six years ago, according to the RCMP.
The Feb. 10 murder spree — one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canada’s history — has sent a shockwave of anguish and disbelief through Tumbler Ridge, a tiny mountain town tucked away in the northern British Columbia interior. Once a quiet haven for hikers, hunters and snowmobilers, the community has been transformed into a crime scene with yellow tape strung around the high school and an army of police suburban SUVs patrolling the streets.
The killing has thrust Tumbler Ridge into the national spotlight, drawing words of support from across the country.
After seeing the two bodies, Hill went back to the boy and put her arm around him. She called 9-1-1 and took him to her basement, where he’d be safe. She later moved him to the Twisted Seasons Bistro, a small café in downtown Tumbler Ridge, where she knew one of the owners and where he would be far removed from the home where the shooting occurred.
Hill said that she recalls the boy saying he just wanted to forget the image of seeing his brother with bullet holes in him.
The RCMP said on Friday that a shotgun was seized from the home and police believe it was used to kill Van Rootselaar’s mother and half-brother. A long gun and rifle that had been modified were found at the school, police said.
The National Post could not confirm the identity of the boy, who eyewitnesses said was eight years old and attended the fourth grade in Tumbler Ridge. RCMP Staff Sergeant Kris Clark declined to confirm the name of the boy that was told to the National Post.
In a previous Feb. 11 update, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald said it was a young female relative of the family who had initially alerted a neighbour. The RCMP did not immediately confirm if the person was actually the young boy whom Hill helped.
“We will not confirm the name of any person who may or may not be subject to the investigation, other than those who have already been identified as a victim or suspect in this case,” Clark said in an email.
Tuesday’s shooting has reverberated into the furthest corners of this tight-knit community, where every resident seems to know the victims, their families, and other people touched by the violence.
Tiffany Hildebrandt, the bistro’s part owner who Hill knew, had a son, 17-year-old Duncan McKay, who was in the high school when the shooting happened.
McKay told National Post he was playing badminton in the school gym when he heard 12 shots ring out in quick succession.
“We thought it was a hammer at first,” he said.
McKay’s teacher ordered the roughly 16 students into the gym storage room, where they waited on blue gymnastics mats until police officers escorted them out of the building. As he left the school, McKay recalls seeing bloody footprints in the front entrance.
“Everyone was trying their best to stay composed,” McKay said.
McKay said his teacher was critical in helping keep the students safe and emotionally supported during the attack.
McKay’s family moved to Tumbler Ridge just five months ago from Chilliwack, B.C., with the hope of settling into a town that offered more outdoorsy pursuits. McKay, who enjoys playing Grand Theft Auto VI and other games on his PlayStation 5, as well as hiking with his friends, said he quickly acclimatized to Tumbler Ridge after the move.
“It was awesome, I was accepted immediately here.”
Established in the 1980s and built around a nearby coal mine, Tumbler Ridge has a distinctly small-town feel with around 2,400 residents. Surrounded by three mountain ridges and dense forests, the town is highly remote even by the standards of northern British Columbia. Vehicle access is limited to a few steep and winding secondary highways. The nearest major urban centre is Grande Prairie, a 2.5 hour drive east across the Alberta border.
While Tumbler Ridge has made strides toward boosting its tourism industry, it remains largely a mining community, with a large portion of jobs and economic activity tied to the coal deposit. In town, white trucks stamped with the logo of Conuma Resources — the company that operates the mine — are ubiquitous.
Residents say the town has maintained a neighbourly atmosphere that they hope will persist after the murders.
“We’re basically like one big family,” said Johan Needhling, a supervisor at the mine who moved to Tumbler Ridge from South Africa three years ago. “If I need any assistance, I can just go to them.”
When the violence struck on Tuesday, families in some cases spent several agonizing hours unsure where their loved ones were and whether they were safe.
Needhling, who said he left South Africa in part to avoid the violence currently gripping the country, was among the parents who were initially unsure of their children’s safety. His 11-year-old daughter, Juane, and nine-year-old son, Johandre, were both locked down at the elementary school for hours, but eventually returned home safe.
“It’s a bad thing for the community, but I believe we’ll get through it,” Needhling said from the front deck of his home, located two blocks from the residence where the shooting happened.
Tristan Quist, a 20-year-old resident, said his younger brother Darian, who didn’t directly witness the shooting, was in the high school’s mechanics shop bay when the attack happened.
Debbie Frank, who moved to Tumbler Ridge in 2000 and is now retired, said she had to take her 17-year-old grandson to nearby Dawson Creek for an appointment on Tuesday morning. Had they not scheduled the appointment for that day, he would have likely been in the high school when the shots were fired, she said. The two were driving back into town when police vehicles with sirens on tore past.
“Somebody was looking out for us,” she said.
Following Tuesday’s murder spree, the town is now grappling with how to navigate forward.
“I think everyone has sort of paused,” said Madison Adams, a five-year Tumbler Ridge resident whose husband previously worked in the mine.
The scene in front of 112 Fellers Ave., a brown nondescript house with a set of wildlife antlers lying in the front yard, is beginning to return to normal. At 5 p.m. on Thursday, RCMP suburbans SUVs blockaded the street in front of the home as two bodies were loaded into a pair of black Chrysler minivans and driven away.
Hill, who was the first to see the bodies at 112, along with her neighbour, is still absorbing what she saw in the home that afternoon. While she is directly feeling the reverberations of the violence, she knows that the families and friends of the victims feel it much more acutely.
For the children who were closest to the violence, memories of the killing will be permanent.
“I know personally what it’s like to have that wall of fear come up when life is disrupted,” she said. “They will carry on, and they will get through it and they will grieve, but they will never be the same children that they were last week. This will shape who they are as people for the rest of their lives.”
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