Authorities have admitted that the “gunperson in a dress” who killed his family and seven others was a biological male
The shooter who killed nine people in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, has been identified by police as “an 18-year-old female by the name of Jesse van Rootselaar,” but was actually born as a “biological male.”
A suspect initially described as a “female in a dress” fatally shot two people in a house and another seven people at a high school in the British Columbia town of Tumbler Ridge on Tuesday afternoon. Police said the “gunperson” injured 25 others before committing suicide by gunshot.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald named the suspect as “an 18-year-old female by the name of Jesse van Rootselaar.”
However, when pressed about the suspect’s gender identity, he said: “I can say that Jesse was born as a biological male who approximately … six years ago, began to transition to female, and identified as female, both socially and publicly.”
Canada’s CTV initially identified the shooter as Jesse Strang on Wednesday. According to the broadcaster, the two bodies in the house have been identified as his mother and brother.
Several hours before CTV’s report, Juno News, a right-wing outlet, claimed that it had been contacted by the suspect’s uncle, who said that Jesse was transgender. Unconfirmed reports on social media link him to a Reddit account where the suspect purportedly expressed interest in firearms and transitioning to female at 15 years old.
The attack is the third-deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history. At least eight mass shootings in the US since 2018 have been carried out by men who identified as women. Most recently, 23-year-old Robert Westman, who had legally changed his name to ‘Robin’, shot two people dead and injured 30 others in an attack on a church in Minneapolis, Minnesota last August.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney canceled a planned trip to Germany in the wake of the shooting. In an address on Wednesday, he called the attack an act of “unheard-of cruelty,” adding “what happened has left our nation in shock and all of us in mourning.”
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