As of about 11:15 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington says James Cody Bryant, 30, of Bellingham, Washington, has been arrested on a criminal complaint charging conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country, over Bryant’s alleged role in the Feb. 10, 2026, school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia.
The charge is an allegation. The Justice Department’s release says the charges in the complaint “are only allegations” and quotes the presumption of innocence. The complaint itself, a 41-page document signed by an FBI special agent, was filed in federal court in Seattle on Oct. 2, four days before the arrest was announced.
What the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced
In a release dated Tuesday, Oct. 6, the office said Bryant “was arrested today on a criminal complaint charging conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country for Bryant’s role in a February 10, 2026, school shooting in British Columbia, Canada.”
The release says the offense “is punishable by up to life in prison.” It also includes this passage: “The charges contained in the criminal complaint are only allegations. A person is presumed innocent unless and until he or she is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”
The FBI investigated the case with assistance from Homeland Security Investigations and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg is prosecuting it, with help from the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
The court record
The complaint is case MJ26-618 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. It cites Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 956(a)(1) and (a)(2)(A), and is dated Oct. 2, 2026, when U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian A. Tsuchida found, on the agent’s sworn statement, that there is probable cause to believe the offense was committed. A finding of probable cause is not a finding of guilt.
The court’s own calendar page for the case, read in the early hours of Wednesday, listed a detention hearing on Tuesday, Oct. 13, at 1:30 p.m. in Seattle courtroom 12B, before Judge Mary Alice Theiler. By about 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday that page no longer loaded, so the hearing details may have changed. The Vancouver Sun, in its Oct. 6 article, wrote that Bryant “made a brief appearance in U.S. district court on Tuesday afternoon,” that the case “was held over to Oct. 13,” and that Bryant remained in custody Tuesday.
What the complaint alleges
The complaint charges that “beginning in or before August 2025, and continuing until on or about February 10, 2026,” Bryant conspired with the shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, to commit murder in British Columbia. The Justice Department’s release puts the start of the Discord contact at “no later than August 2025.”
The complaint says that shortly after the shooting Discord “voluntarily provided information to the RCMP, which subsequently shared the information with the FBI.” Discord described the shooter’s messages with another user as discussing “preparation and coordination relating to the shooting” in direct messages “from November 2025 to February 10, 2026,” and Discord’s records identified the subscriber for that user’s account as Bryant. The complaint adds that the only Twitch account that viewed the shooter’s livestream, which it says lasted about 20 seconds before it was disconnected, is registered under Bryant’s date of birth and known email address.
The release lists several ways Bryant allegedly agreed to help. In the Justice Department’s account, Bryant:
- agreed to record and broadcast the shooter’s live stream;
- helped test the live-streaming equipment on multiple occasions;
- gave what the release calls tactical advice;
- sent money to buy items connected to the attack, including a lighter that, in the release’s words, “would be used to construct an explosive device”;
- confirmed, “mere moments before the shooting,” that Bryant was receiving the livestream; and
- advised the shooter about “keeping the murder plot secret by deleting their messages and using Virtual Private Networks (VPN).”
The complaint dates some of these steps. It says Bryant helped test the livestream on or about Aug. 30, 2025, and again on or about Jan. 4, 2026, and sent $14.33 through PayPal on Jan. 25, 2026. It adds that PayPal reversed that transaction because the shooter’s PayPal account had been deactivated. It says that on Feb. 10, moments before the shooting began, Bryant accessed the livestream to record and broadcast it, confirmed watching, and “shortly thereafter told J.V.R. that the stream went down.”
The release also says that at various times Bryant assured the shooter that Bryant would not turn the shooter in to law enforcement. It adds: “In various conversations between August and the February shooting, Bryant tried to talk Van Rootselaar out of doing the attack. But ultimately, Bryant did not contact law enforcement and agreed to handle the live streaming just minutes before the attack.”
Both halves of that statement come from the Justice Department. The complaint has sections on both: one on Bryant’s agreement not to report the shooter to law enforcement, and one on “Statements of Disapproval and Attempts to Convince Van Rootselaar to Delay or not Commit the Attack.”
The release also makes a further point, in its own words: “Even after Van Rootselaar had killed two family members, there was time to intervene before the school shooting.” That is the Justice Department’s characterization. The next sentences say the shooter “could not get the family car started to head to the school” and that “Bryant gave advice about how to get the engine to turn over, allowing the shooter to put the school shooting plan in motion.” These too are allegations, not findings.
What Bryant told agents, according to the complaint
The complaint says Homeland Security Investigations agents interviewed Bryant at Bryant’s home in Bellingham on Feb. 12, 2026, two days after the shooting. According to the complaint, “Bryant admitted to being the user of the ‘meldritch_’ Discord account” and “confirmed that Bryant had been communicating with Van Rootselaar during the months prior to the murders and had viewed Van Rootselaar’s attempted livestream of the attack.”
FBI agents interviewed Bryant again on March 3, the complaint says. In its account of that interview, Bryant said Bryant agreed to record and broadcast the livestream “to ‘placate’ Van Rootselaar,” and told the shooter “it was a bad idea to attack a school because there would be too many young victims.” The complaint says Bryant also suggested other kinds of places instead; this article does not repeat them. It also says Bryant declined to consent to Discord giving the FBI the messages, and that the messages were no longer stored on Bryant’s phone. A magistrate judge issued a search warrant for Bryant’s Discord account on March 13, the complaint says, and the FBI obtained the records on March 26.
These are the complaint’s descriptions of what was said. Neither the release nor the complaint reports a plea or a statement from Bryant’s lawyer.
The Feb. 10 shooting, and how many people died
The release says Van Rootselaar killed two people at home and then went to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where the shooter “shot and killed five children ages 12 and 13 and killed an educational assistant.” It says an improvised explosive device was used to damage the school and that the shooter exchanged gunfire with police and died by suicide.
The complaint gives the school toll in its own words: the shooter “killed six people, including a staff member and five children ages 12 and 13, and injured two other children who had gunshot wounds that required serious medical treatment.” That matches the release’s opening paragraph, which says the shooting “killed six people and seriously injured others.” With the two killed at home, that is eight, the number in the BC RCMP’s statement of Oct. 6: “Eight victims lost their lives.”
What officials said
Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd’s words are the office’s characterization of the case, not a court finding. He called the shooting “a horrific tragedy for that small community and for all of Canada.” He also said: “It is even more profoundly disturbing to learn that a resident of Western Washington had a role in the attack and took steps – providing counsel, technical advice, and money to the shooter planning such a tragedy.”
W. Mike Herrington, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle field office, said: “On behalf of the FBI, I want to express heartfelt sympathy for the victims of this tragedy and their loved ones.” BC RCMP Assistant Commissioner Elija Rain, speaking of the charge announced Tuesday, said: “We remain mindful that no investigative milestone can undo the harm caused that day, but we hope it reflects our ongoing commitment to seeking answers and pursuing all available evidence.”
What the BC RCMP’s own statement adds
In a statement dated Oct. 6, the BC RCMP began: “Two hundred and thirty-eight days ago, the people of Tumbler Ridge, BC experienced a tragedy that forever changed the lives of families, friends, students, educators, first responders and the entire community.”
On how the case began, the statement says: “Within days of the incident, we contacted the US Department of Homeland Security after receiving information from one of the online platforms used by the shooter. The FBI investigation was launched soon afterwards.”
It also explains why the RCMP said little publicly for months: “Our decision not to publicly disclose further details did not mean we had not determined some of these answers. Rather it was to protect the integrity of work being done in both Canada and the United States … to prepare for the possibility that criminal charges could be pursued.”
In British Columbia, the statement says, investigators “have completed and reviewed over 90 interview statements from students, educators and first responders.”
The statement says the Canadian side is not finished: “Our focus remains on supporting the ongoing criminal proceedings in Washington State and continuing our close cooperation with the FBI. Our RCMP criminal investigation remains ongoing and the possibility of further charges being pursued in Canada remains under active consideration.”
What the Vancouver Sun adds
The Vancouver Sun reported on a news conference in Seattle on Tuesday. It says officials said court proceedings will remain in Washington state because Bryant’s activities were in that jurisdiction. It also reports that officials said there was no specific ideology that bonded the two or motivated the shooting, and that they described the messages between the two as focused on “an intense desire for the shooting to receive that sort of notoriety.”
The Sun’s article says the two met on the video chat platform Omegle sometime before 2023. The filed complaint does not name Omegle: it says Bryant told the FBI that Bryant met the shooter online about three years earlier.
Lawsuits against OpenAI
The Sun notes that the shooting “has spawned two separate lawsuits against OpenAI,” and says the B.C. government filed one of them this fall. Other reports give a larger count for the cases brought by families and others. Global News reported on April 29, 2026, that seven families had filed seven lawsuits against OpenAI and its founder Sam Altman in a San Francisco court. On Sept. 2, 2026, it reported that 30 more lawsuits had been filed in California, “bringing the total to 37 claims.”
These are claims, not findings, and they are separate from the criminal case against Bryant. The Sun’s article does not include a response from OpenAI. An OpenAI spokesperson told Global News in April that “the events in Tumbler Ridge are a tragedy” and wrote: “We have a zero-tolerance policy for using our tools to assist in committing violence.”
Alleged versus proved, and what is not known
Everything above about Bryant’s conduct comes from the Justice Department’s release, from the complaint, or from the Sun’s reporting on the news conference. The complaint rests on a federal agent’s sworn statement, filed to establish probable cause; none of it has been tested in court.
Several things are not known:
- No plea and no statement from Bryant’s lawyer appears in the release, the complaint, the court’s calendar page or the Sun’s article.
- The court’s calendar page, while it was available, called the Oct. 13 hearing a detention hearing. It did not say whether detention will be contested. Other outlets have reported later court dates that this article could not confirm on the court’s page.
- The RCMP says the possibility of further charges in Canada “remains under active consideration.” It does not say whether any will be brought.
Sources and further reading
- Bellingham resident charged with conspiring to commit murder in connection with school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.
- United States v. James Cody Bryant, criminal complaint (Case 2:26-mj-00618-BAT)
- BC RCMP Statement: Bellingham resident charged with conspiring to commit murder in connection with school shooting in Tumbler Ridge