Thirty new lawsuits allege OpenAI executives overruled safety team's recommendation to alert police before Canadian shooting

Thirty complaints were filed in San Francisco federal court on Wednesday, September 2, 2026, by students, teachers, and a principal from Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, alleging that OpenAI executives prioritized the company's public image over a safety team's recommendation to alert police about an alleged mass shooter's violent ChatGPT conversations, according to NPR.

The alleged shooter, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, killed five students and a teacher at the school in February 2026, along with her mother and 11-year-old half-brother at their home beforehand. Around two dozen others were injured in the shooting. In April 2026, families of seven victims had sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman over the company's failure to notify law enforcement; the new complaints expand the litigation to include additional survivors and family members.

The new lawsuits center on OpenAI's internal decision-making about threat reporting. In June 2025, eight months before the shooting, OpenAI's automated systems flagged Van Rootselaar's ChatGPT account for "gun violence activity and planning," according to NPR. The company deactivated that account, but Van Rootselaar created a second account and continued conversations with ChatGPT. OpenAI has stated it did not become aware of the second account until after the shooting.

According to the complaints, when OpenAI's Intelligence and Investigations team reviewed the flagged conversations from June, they determined the account "posed a credible threat of gun violence against real people" and recommended the company alert the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, per NPR. However, the plaintiffs allege that recommendation was overruled by OpenAI's global affairs team, led by Chris Lehane, the veteran political strategist responsible for public relations, public policy, and political relationships. The complaints allege that Lehane and Altman approve decisions about whether to refer safety concerns to law enforcement.

One complaint filed by Deidre Rushlow, a seventh-grade teacher at the school, states: "As a result, the decision whether to alert law enforcement to a user planning a mass attack was not made by the trained threat-assessment professionals who urged OpenAI to contact the RCMP. It was made, on information and belief, by Lehane himself, or by someone in his chain of command, and ratified by Sam Altman," according to NPR.

Jay Edelson, the lead attorney representing the Tumbler Ridge victims and their families, told NPR: "What these complaints show is the larger impact and how many people's lives were really destroyed, all based on decisions made by people at OpenAI." Edelson said of Lehane: "Instead of focusing on what's safe for the community, he's focused on, what are the political and public relations fallout going to be if this becomes public?"

OpenAI disputes the allegations. Jason Kwon, the company's chief strategy officer, stated in an emailed statement to NPR that the claims are "absolutely false" and that Lehane was not involved in the referral decision. "It is absolutely false to say Chris Lehane was involved with our original referral decision, or that our investigators report to him in any way," Kwon said. He also stated: "It's also completely untrue to say that the people at the center of these challenging decisions do not prioritize safety, or that there are 'political' or 'public relations' factors at play."

Kwon said OpenAI's Intelligence and Investigations team and legal department report to him and "work hard to define standards and processes for when to report cases to law enforcement and to apply those standards to really difficult and complex situations." He stated: "The professionals working on these teams choose to do this incredibly difficult work because they care so deeply about keeping people safe." He added: "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about what happened at Tumbler Ridge, or the victims of this devastating tragedy and their families."

OpenAI has previously stated it had a "zero tolerance" policy for using its tools to assist in violence and said it had strengthened safeguards and how ChatGPT responds to signs of distress. The company's blog post on safety policies states: "When conversations indicate an imminent and credible risk of harm to others, we notify law enforcement."

On the same day the new complaints were filed, OpenAI asked the court to dismiss the original seven lawsuits, arguing the cases would be better heard in British Columbia.