Posts falsely claim photo shows Tumbler Ridge shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar

On Feb. 10 2026, an 18-year-old Canadian woman shot and killed her mother and stepbrother at their home before heading to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and killing at least six more as of Feb. 12, 2026, and injuring dozens of others. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police identified the shooter as Jesse Van Rootselaar, who police said appeared to have killed herself following the shooting.

After the shooting, many people on social media rushed to identify the shooter based on little to no credible information, sharing various names and photos they claimed were the shooter’s. One such post (archived) simply consisted of the words “The shooter,” paired with an image of a woman with orange hair.

Other social media posts on Facebook (archived) as well as X joined in claiming the woman with the orange hair was the shooter. The image also appeared in some news reporting on the shooting, such as a Times of India article (archived) that credited it to an X account. Many Snopes readers searched the site to find information on the identity of the shooter. 

Though real, the photo was not of the Tumbler Ridge shooter. It was instead a photo from the Facebook profile of a woman unrelated to the shooting. Therefore, we have rated the image as miscaptioned.

In a news release from Feb. 11, the day after the shooting, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police shared a legitimate photo of Van Rootselaar. It showed a person with long, dark brown hair and a nose that did not match that of the orange-haired person whose photo was shared online. 

The photo of the orange-haired woman, who looked distinctly different from Van Rootselaar as she appeared in the image shared by police, was the cover photo of a still-active Facebook profile. The profile changed its cover photo to a white heart on a black background on Feb. 11. Because Van Rootselaar was found dead at the scene of the shooting, she would not have been able to make changes to her Facebook profile the following day.

In a fact check of the same claims, AFP, an international news agency based in France, screenshotted the Facebook profile as it appeared previously with the name Zylii Strang. The AFP’s fact check also included a screenshot of a since-deleted LinkedIn profile belonging to the same person and referenced messages it exchanged with their mother, who told AFP the woman in the photo was “afraid to go outside after being misidentified.”

Considering that in the two days since the shooting the profile has changed its name, profile picture and cover photo, made its posts and profile information private by the time Snopes found it, and belonged to someone who recently deleted their LinkedIn profile and whose mother said was “afraid to go outside,” Snopes is not directly linking to the person’s profile out of respect for their privacy.

The LinkedIn screenshot from AFP showed that Strang has worked since September 2018. At that time, Van Rootselaar would have been 11. All of Strang’s former jobs as they appeared in the screenshot were based in Ontario, Canada, which is hundreds of miles from Tumbler Ridge’s province, British Columbia.

The RCMP identified the shooter’s slain mother as Jennifer Jacobs, although CBC News, Canada’s largest news broadcaster, previously referred to the same woman as Jennifer Strang. The CBC said Jennifer Jacobs was her legal name.

A day earlier, the RCMP said at a news conference that Van Rootselaar was a transgender woman. Zylii Strang’s photo was frequently shared in transphobic social media posts falsely claiming a link between transgender people and some heightened degree of violence. Therefore, it is likely that bad actors reposted Strang’s photo and misidentified her as Van Rootselaar based on her last name and gender identity.

For further reading, Snopes has previously fact-checked false claims that mass shooters are disproportionately transgender.