Tumbler Ridge survivors join 30 new lawsuits against OpenAI

PENTICTON — More Tumbler Ridge survivors sued OpenAI and founder Sam Altman in California federal court on Wednesday, bringing the total number of plaintiffs to 37..The new plaintiffs are educators, a principal and students who were inside Tumbler Ridge Secondary School on February 10. Among them is a 13-year-old identified only as A.C., who the filings say was trapped in the library, watched classmates and a teacher die, and played dead among the bodies to stay alive. Teacher Deidre Rushlow locked her classroom door, pulled students under a desk and called the library while shotgun blasts came through the wood.A 16-year-old identified as D.I. hid in a science classroom as bullets tore the door and a wounded younger student was carried in.None of the allegations have been tested in court. OpenAI and Altman have not yet filed defences to the latest batch.The complaints plead negligence, negligent entrustment, aiding and abetting a mass shooting, strict product liability and negligent infliction of emotional distress. All 37 ask for jury trials. Counsel John Rice told Global the families want the full ChatGPT logs from the shooter’s first session to the day of the attack, plus the internal chain-of-command paper that recorded the decision not to call Canadian police..“Probably most importantly for these families, they want to prevent another Tumbler Ridge,” Rice said. The suits ask a California court for injunctive relief that would force changes inside the company.Chicago lawyer Jay Edelson, on the same cross-border team, told Global in April the jury would be asked “to send a strong message to OpenAI that it can’t make a decision to put profits over the lives of little kids,” and that the ask would be “at least a billion dollars.”The new wave adds a sharper charge than the first seven: that OpenAI’s safety staff flagged 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar’s account in June 2025 as a credible, specific threat of gun violence, recommended a referral to the RCMP, and were overruled. Later filings name chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane as the official who, the plaintiffs say, put the company’s image ahead of a phone call. Van Rootselaar’s first account was banned. The suits say a second account was opened and the conversations continued.OpenAI has said the activity did not meet its threshold for an imminent and credible risk of serious physical harm. In an April statement the company called the shooting a tragedy, restated a zero-tolerance rule against using its tools to assist violence, and listed tighter safeguards on distress signals, threat escalation and repeat policy violators.Western Standard first reported the civil track in March, when Cia Edmonds filed in British Columbia on behalf of herself and her two daughters, including 12-year-old Maya Gebala..Maya was shot three times in the head and neck during the tragic event. Doctors told the family the brain damage was unsurvivable. She is still at BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver. She has had at least five surgeries, including a May cranioplasty to set a synthetic skull plate over the wound. In June her father, David Gebala, took her off the hospital grounds for the first time, to the Bloedel Conservatory. Western Standard recorded that outing, and the smiles that came with it, on June 17..On Monday, nearly seven months after the shooting, Edmonds posted a video of Maya saying “Mom.” “I prayed for this day, every day, for months,” she wrote.It's the latest recovery milestone in what many are calling, "a miracle.".Back in Victoria, meanwhile, the BC government retained counsel in the province and in California on July 7.Attorney General Niki Sharma said Victoria would explore every legal avenue against the company that flagged the prompts and never called the police. That file is separate from the 37 private claims.Eby announced May 7 that Tumbler Ridge Secondary would be demolished and rebuilt on a new site after the school board, through a multinational firm dedicated to post-tragedy consultation, consulted survivors, families and the town.“The direction of the community is clear, they wanted to go with a new school on a new site,” he said on the legislature steps.Ottawa and Victoria each pledged $100 million on June 18 toward a new school and a modernized health centre. Prime Minister Mark Carney said construction would begin with removal of the old building. The new site has not been named. The district has said it will be central to downtown and that design consultations, run on trauma-informed terms, are due this fall..Van Rootselaar, 18, killed his mother, Jennifer Jacobs, 39, and 11-year-old half-brother Emmett Jacobs at home on February 10, then drove to the school and killed five students and education assistant Shannda Aviugana-Durand, 39, before dying of a self-inflicted wound. The students killed in the building were Abel Mwansa, 12, Kylie Smith, 12, Zoey Benoit, 12, Ticaria Lampert, 12, and Ezekiel Schofield, 13.OpenAI says it has tightened how ChatGPT reads distress and how it escalates a threat. The families say the June 2025 flag was the chance that mattered, and the phone call that did not go out to police is now a matter for a California jury.

Tumbler Ridge survivors join 30 new lawsuits against OpenAI

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