British Columbia Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman Over Tumbler Ridge School Shooting

The lawsuit

On September 22, 2026, the government of British Columbia sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman in federal court in San Francisco.

The case concerns the February 10, 2026 school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., in which eight people were killed. The shooter was an 18-year-old former student.

What the province alleges

  • OpenAI flagged the shooter's ChatGPT account as early as June 2025 over conversations about gun violence.
  • According to the complaint, the reviewers who examined those chats concluded the user posed a credible risk and recommended referring the case to authorities.
  • The complaint says OpenAI leadership declined, on the grounds that the case did not meet its higher threshold for "credible and imminent" threats. Police were not notified.

These are allegations in a lawsuit and have not been tested in court.

What B.C. is asking for

  • financial compensation for past and future emergency-response and community-recovery costs;
  • a court order requiring OpenAI to overhaul how it identifies and handles violent threats in user conversations.

B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma said: "This action is an important step toward seeking justice for the families, students, educators and community members whose lives were forever changed."

OpenAI's earlier response

In April, Altman published an apology to the Tumbler Ridge community: "I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June." The lawsuit says he promised reforms but did not follow through.

Sources

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above.