US resident charged in helping Tumbler Ridge shooter

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current podcast. A warning, this next conversation contains disturbing details and deals with suicide. New information has come out in connection with the mass school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. A 30-year-old from Washington State has been charged. Law enforcement, law enforcement officials allege the accused encouraged and supported the individual who carried out the mass shooting earlier this year. Here's Neil Floyd, acting US attorney, speaking yesterday.

We learned that a person here in Western Washington had been in repeated contact with the shooter, offering advice, sending money, and even agreeing to live stream the horrific event. James Cody Bryant had the information and ability to alert law enforcement and even discussed that possibility with the shooter, but he chose not to.

In February, the shooter killed her mother and half-brother. She then drove to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where she shot and killed six others and later killed herself. For more on the details revealed in US court documents yesterday and how this investigation unfolded, I'm joined by CBC's senior reporter, Caroline Barghout. She's in Vancouver. Caroline, good morning.

Good morning.

How did Canadian and US authorities make this connection between the individual arrested and the BC shooter?

So in the criminal complaint against Bryant, the FBI says during the investigation into the shooting at Tumbler Ridge, they learned shortly before that incident, Jessi VanRultenalar logged into her Twitch account, which is a social media site, and started a live stream. Now, that live stream just lasted for 20 seconds before it went down. But in those 20 seconds, the FBI says it showed Jessi VanRultenalar sitting in her car with a rifle and a long gun in her lap. Uh, police got access to the Twitch records through a search warrant, and they found out that just one person watched that live stream, and that was James Cody Bryant, a person living in Bellingham, which is a city in Washington State just across the BC border.

The shooter was 18 years old and was in-

Mm-hmm

... BC. The accused is 30 and, as you mentioned, in Washington State. What did authorities say about how these two individuals met?

Police say they met about three years ago on a chat roulette site, uh, called Omegle. It doesn't exist anymore. It's been shut down, not related to this case. But the criminal complaint says that Bryant told police that after they met on Omegle, they had sporadic contact for the first year until VanRultenalar was, quote, institutionalized, end quote, for mental health issues. Um, Bryant said