I loathe using the New York Post as a source, especially because in the rare instance a trans person commits a crime, the fact that they are trans is either shoved into the headline or jammed into the first sentence. In this case, it was both. It is cheap, it is inflammatory, and it exists to feed culture war reflexes, not to help anyone understand what actually happened.

That said, there is one part of their reporting that I want to discuss, and it has nothing to do with gender identity.

It is what the shooter’s mother reportedly said about her child when they were seven years old.

According to archived Facebook posts, Jennifer Strang described deeply troubling behavior. She said her child showed intense empathy when someone was hurt by others but flashed a “devious grin” when hurting siblings. She discussed her child using baby talk at nearly eight years old, territorial attachment to her, and swings between being helpful and being cruel. Strang acknowledged that the school wanted behavioral testing and then admitted she was uncomfortable with the idea, even after signing the consent.

That line stuck with me.

‘Uncomfortable’ with testing.

Previously it was reported that Strang identifies as a “conservative-leaning libertarian.” I cannot help but wonder if that discomfort was rooted in opposition to mental health intervention itself. We have seen this too many times when teen shooters and would-be shooters ask their parents for psychiatric help and are turned away because mom or dad did not believe in therapy, did not trust doctors, did not want a diagnosis on record, or decided Jesus or discipline would fix everything.

When schools raise red flags and parents recoil, kids fall through the cracks.

Fast forward a decade, and we are talking about Jesse Van Rootselaar, age 18, who spiraled into obsessive consumption of extreme gore content, praised mass violence online, and openly admitted that violent media felt addictive. This ended with his mother and stepbrother murdered at home, followed by an attack at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.

That is the story that matters. Early warning signs. A parent uneasy about evaluation. A system that apparently did not intervene in a meaningful way. Years later, catastrophic violence.

But before the blood was even dry, another predictable cycle kicked in.

The “transvestigators.”

Right-wing agitators and social media clout chasers rushed online to “solve” the case themselves. They circulated random photos. They slapped names onto faces. They confidently identified the wrong person as the shooter, just to be first, just to farm engagement, just to feed their followers.

According to reporting from the Vancouver Sun, one innocent woman in Ontario found her image blasted across social platforms, falsely accused of mass murder. Influencers amplified it. Some outlets repeated it. Corrections came later, but by then the damage was already done. The woman’s mother said the victim was devastated and afraid to go outside.

The B.C. Human Rights Commissioner warned that misinformation was being paired with hateful narratives. That is a polite way of saying people used a tragedy to target marginalized communities while putting random civilians in danger.

This is what happens when tragedy meets algorithm.

Everyone wants to be a detective. Everyone wants to be first. Nobody wants to be careful.

What makes this especially infuriating is how selectively outrage is deployed. The same people screaming about “trans violence” had nothing to say about parental resistance to mental health care. Nothing to say about early behavioral warnings. Nothing to say about years of untreated distress and isolation. Nothing to say about platforms that normalize gore consumption. Nothing to say about how easily misinformation spreads when tragedy becomes content.

They skipped all of that and went straight to blaming a demographic.

That is not analysis. That is propaganda.

If you actually care about preventing the next school shooting, you start where this one started. A young child exhibiting disturbing behavior. A school asking for evaluation. A parent uneasy about testing. A system that failed to intervene in a way that mattered.

Everything else is noise.

And every time online mobs misidentify suspects for clicks, they prove yet again that they are not seeking justice. They are seeking attention, even if it means destroying innocent lives along the way.

Remember, the real story is almost always upstream, long before the sirens and much longer before the hashtags.

(Sources)

• Canada trans shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar’s mom described him as sadistic — as twisted addiction to death videos revealed – NY Post Do Not Click!
• ‘Hateful narratives’: Misinformation surges after Tumbler Ridge mass shooting – Vancouver Sun