A 30-year-old Washington state resident was arrested Tuesday and charged with conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country in connection with the Feb. 10 shootings in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. The case reaches across the border to one of Canada’s deadliest shootings and puts James Cody Bryant at the center of a federal prosecution that carries up to life in prison.
That charge matters now because Bryant is accused of doing more than talking online with Jesse Van Rootselaar. Prosecutors say he was in repeated contact with the 18-year-old, gave advice and money, and offered to help livestream the killings. He was in custody on Tuesday as the case moved from a violent February morning in British Columbia into a U.S. court proceeding.
Bryant and Van Rootselaar met on Omegle about three years before the shooting and kept in touch through Discord, with no indication they ever met in person. The FBI said the two communicated there after moving from the random video chat service to the messaging platform, building a connection that investigators say became part of the attack that followed.
Van Rootselaar killed her mother and 11-year-old stepbrother about 2 p.m. on Feb. 10, then went to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and killed five children and a teacher. The children killed at the school included three 12-year-old girls and two boys aged 12 and 13, and two other children were shot and seriously wounded. The shooting was livestreamed on Twitch for about 20 seconds before it shut off, and an account appearing to be Bryant's was the only account that saw it.
There is, however, a part of the case that cuts against any simple reading of the online contact. Bryant tried several times to talk Van Rootselaar out of the attack or get her to reconsider, including messages that asked whether she was sure and suggested uncertainty should be taken as a sign. Yet prosecutors say he also had the information and ability to alert law enforcement, discussed that option with the shooter, and chose not to. On the day of the killings, when Van Rootselaar had trouble starting her car after the first killings, Bryant is accused of offering advice that helped her get moving so she could reach the school.
The prosecution now has to prove that the contact went beyond disturbing chatter and crossed into criminal help for murder in another country. If it does, Bryant faces a charge that can lead to life in prison. If it does not, the central question is how much an online conversation, even one that included warnings, can be treated as assistance in a mass killing.
