‘Nomadic lifestyle’ of Tumbler Ridge shooter, who created shopping center bloodbath sport – Winnipeg Free Press

TUMBLER RIDGE – An image of the troubled lifetime of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar is rising, with a court docket ruling depicting her household’s “nomadic lifestyle” and a gaming firm eradicating her account, which was used to create a shopping center bloodbath simulation.

Online platform Roblox mentioned in a press release Thursday that it had eliminated the account “connected to this horrifying incident as well as any content associated with the suspect.”

Videos of the “gaming experience” which have been shared on social media present a personality working round a mall, selecting up weapons and capturing different characters.

Roblox says it’s dedicated to “fully supporting law enforcement in their investigation.”

Police have mentioned they made a number of visits for psychological well being considerations to the split-level house in Tumbler Ridge that Van Rootselaar shared along with her mom, Jennifer Jacobs, and 11-year-old stepbrother, Emmett Jacobs.

RCMP say Van Rootselaar, 18, killed them each within the household house earlier than persevering with her killing spree at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, the place she shot useless a instructor’s aide and 5 kids.

The shooter had been apprehended a number of occasions below B.C.’s Mental Health Act, and had dropped out of faculty 4 years in the past, police say.

A 2015 B.C. Supreme Court determination in a dispute between the shooter’s mother and father describes Jennifer Jacobs, shifting along with her kids between Newfoundland and Labrador, Grande Cache in Alberta and Powell River, B.C., within the earlier 5 years.

Jacobs, also referred to as Jennifer Strang, was discovered to have engaged in “reprehensible conduct” by failing to present her kids’s father sufficient discover that she was shifting again to Newfoundland in August 2015.

She was ordered to return their kids to B.C.

Police investigators in white protecting fits had been working Thursday on the Tumbler Ridge house the place the killings started.

Outside the house, there have been indicators of the lives erased, blue bins and a pickup truck within the driveway.

In the snowy entrance yard lay a bicycle, tangled in yellow police tape.

In the court docket ruling, Justice Anthony Saunders blames Jennifer Jacobs’ “nomadic lifestyle” for Justin Jan Vanrootselaar not having vigorously pursued his parental rights. The court docket spells the daddy’s surname with out the area.

“Ms. Strang acknowledges in her affidavit that there have been at least months at a time when Mr. Vanrootselaar has had no idea where the children have been,” Saunders notes.

Vanrootselaar mentioned in a press release to Global News on Thursday that as “the biological father of the individual responsible, I carry a sorrow that is difficult to put into words.” 

The assertion mentioned he was estranged from Jesse Van Rootselaar, whom he mentioned by no means used that surname.

“While that distance is the reality of our relationship, it does not lessen the heartbreak I feel for the pain that has been caused to innocent people and to the town we call home,” he mentioned.

Jacobs is described within the court docket paperwork as being pregnant with a baby due in January 2016. Her current kids, Saunders’ ruling says, had had “no personal contact” with their father on the time of the ruling, though they had been starting to have cellphone contact.

Jennifer Jacobs’ Facebook account lists her hometown as Lawn, N.L.

In that small group of about 600 close to the coast of the French islands of St. Pierre-Miquelon and a few 400-kilometre drive west of St. John’s, she is remembered as an occasional customer.

Resident Doris Strang is unrelated however says Jacobs used to go to from B.C. when her grandmother was nonetheless alive, by no means staying for very lengthy. 

“It’s a tragedy,” Strang mentioned in an interview Thursday. “It’s affected a lot of people in this little town … (people) are just outraged about it, that this could happen, and it could have been worse.”

According to a 2018 publish on her social media, Jacobs had 5 kids. She was featured in a 2023 article from the northeast B.C. information website Energeticcity.ca, urging mother and father to push for higher well being care. 

The article was printed after a nurse mentioned Jacobs’ then-seven-year-old son had a abdomen bug that turned out to be appendicitis.

Jacobs’ Facebook profile says she labored for Tumbler Ridge coal mining firm Conuma Resources. Her pal checklist contains quite a few residents of each Lawn and Tumbler Ridge.

They embrace Cia Edmonds, the mom of 12-year-old Maya Gebala who was shot by Van Rootselaar and is gravely injured in BC Children’s Hospital.

Police have mentioned Van Rootselaar selected her victims on the college at random.

— Jack Farrell in Edmonton, Brenna Owen in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., and Devin Stevens in Halifax

This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Feb. 12, 2026.