The Justice Department has charged a 30-year-old Bellingham, Wash., resident with conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country over the February school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, accusing James Cody Bryant of advising the teenage shooter, sending money and agreeing to help livestream the attack. Bryant was arrested in Bellingham on Tuesday morning, and the charge carries a potential sentence of up to life in prison.
The Feb. 10 attack killed eight people. Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, killed two family members at home before driving to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where authorities said five children ages 12 and 13 and an educational assistant were fatally shot. Van Rootselaar then died by suicide. Until Tuesday, it had not been publicly known that anyone else allegedly helped plan the massacre, one of the deadliest shootings in Canada's history.
The two first connected roughly three years before the shooting on Omegle, a now-defunct site that paired strangers for video chats, and later stayed in touch on Discord, according to W. Mike Herrington, who leads the FBI's Seattle office as special agent in charge. Herrington said there was no indication they had ever met in person. Prosecutors say the pair had begun talking on Discord about killing multiple people in Canada no later than August 2025. From November 2025 until the day of the attack, according to the 41-page criminal complaint, their direct messages covered weapons, stealing ammunition, building an incendiary device, sizing up targets, the mechanics of a livestream and last-minute coordination.
Officials say Bryant gave the shooter "tactical advice on how to increase the carnage and what firearms to use." When they weighed targets, the complaint says, Van Rootselaar proposed a school, while Bryant suggested a grocery store or a church instead. In another exchange cited in an affidavit filed with the complaint, Van Rootselaar allegedly told Bryant of wanting to "avoid doing a school" but added that "there's just so many reasons why it's ideal," and Bryant replied that attacking a hotel "seems like a good idea."
Neil Floyd, the acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, said the money Bryant sent came to a little over $100, mostly for a lighter and a pair of shoes the shooter wanted for the attack. One PayPal payment from Bryant, $14.33 on Jan. 25, was meant for a lighter to be fixed to an explosive device, the complaint says, and on Jan. 4 Bryant helped with a test run of the livestream. The complaint says the two discussed sending weapons to Van Rootselaar, an idea Bryant was uncomfortable with and refused. Authorities said Bryant also urged secrecy, advising that messages be deleted and that the stream run through virtual private networks.
On the day of the attack, after the killings at home, the shooter struggled to start the family car. Bryant "provided advice and offered assistance on how to get the car started" so the shooter could go on to the school, Floyd said, and the complaint says Bryant advised holding the start button in. The Twitch stream ran for only about 20 seconds before cutting off, officials said. According to the complaint, Twitch said the only account that viewed it appeared to belong to Bryant.
Herrington said Bryant agreed to record the feed and broadcast it "in a way that would maximize notoriety for the shooter." "Without Bryant's misplaced loyalty and willingness to operate the livestream, we don't ultimately know if the shooter would have gone through with the crime," Herrington said.
At various points between August 2025 and the shooting, Bryant tried to dissuade Van Rootselaar, the complaint says, but never alerted law enforcement and agreed to run the livestream just minutes before the attack. Floyd said Bryant "had the information and ability to alert law enforcement, and even discussed that possibility with the shooter," but chose not to.
Federal agents interviewed Bryant two days after the attack, according to the complaint. Bryant told agents that Van Rootselaar was fixated on mass shootings and studied livestreamed recordings of earlier ones, the complaint says. Canadian authorities contacted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security soon after the shooting, acting on information from one of the online platforms the shooter had used, said Elija Rain, an assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia. Discord said it opened its own review as soon as news of the attack broke, then proactively handed relevant information to law enforcement and took down the suspect's account. The FBI investigated with help from Homeland Security Investigations and the RCMP, and Rain said the cooperation and expertise of U.S. counterparts had been "invaluable in advancing the work across jurisdictions."
Officials said no particular ideology linked the two or motivated the attack. "There was a lot of focus on research on other mass shootings, how those were received publicly and an intense desire for this shooting to receive that sort of notoriety," Herrington said.
Bryant appeared briefly in U.S. District Court on Tuesday afternoon, and the case was put over to Oct. 13. Bryant remained in custody Tuesday, and officials said the prosecution will stay in Washington state, where Bryant's alleged conduct took place. No defense lawyer for Bryant was listed in online federal court records on Tuesday afternoon. The charge is an allegation, and Bryant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.