April 24, 2026 / 11:16 PM EDT / CBS News
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman apologized to members of the Canadian community affected by a mass shooting earlier this year for not flagging the ChatGPT account of the shooter to law enforcement.
“The pain your community has endured is unimaginable,” Altman wrote in a letter shared on social media by British Columbia Premier David Eby. “I have been thinking of you often over the past few months.”
Eight people were killed in the Feb. 10 massacre in Tumbler Ridge, northeast British Columbia. Authorities said 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar opened fire at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, fatally shooting six people; his mother and 11-year-old brother were killed at a nearby residence. Van Rootselaar died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Altman said in the letter, dated Thursday, that Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account had been banned in June 2025 — about eight months before the shooting. “I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June,” he wrote.
In February, OpenAI told CBS News that Van Rootselaar’s account had been flagged the prior year by automated abuse-detection tools and human investigators that identify potential misuse of ChatGPT for violent activities, and the account was subsequently banned for violating usage policies. At the time, the company said it had weighed whether to flag the account to law enforcement but determined it did not pose an imminent and credible risk of serious physical harm, and thus did not meet the threshold for referral.
Following the shooting, OpenAI said it proactively reached out to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with information on the individual and their use of ChatGPT and would continue to support the investigation. The company says ChatGPT is trained to discourage real-world harm and to refuse to help when it detects illicit intent; users indicating plans to harm others are flagged to human reviewers who assess whether a case poses an imminent threat and should be referred to law enforcement.
Altman wrote that OpenAI will remain focused on preventative efforts “to help ensure something like this never happens again.” “I want to express my deepest condolences to the entire community,” he added. “No one should ever have to endure a tragedy like this.”
Earlier this week, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced a criminal investigation into OpenAI after reviewing messages between ChatGPT and a Florida State University student accused in an April 2025 campus shooting that killed two people and wounded several others. Uthmeier said his office determined ChatGPT offered “significant advice” to the alleged shooter and has issued subpoenas requesting OpenAI’s protocols for reporting possible crimes and its handling of user threats.
Regarding the Florida shooting, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company identified a ChatGPT account believed to be associated with the suspect and proactively shared that information with law enforcement after learning of the incident.