Bellingham Woman Detained for Alleged Role in Canada's Tumbler Ridge School Shooting
Melody Bryant of Bellingham, WA, is held without bail for allegedly aiding the shooter who killed 8 in Canada. A federal judge found no conditions could ensure community safety.
Bellingham Resident Held Without Bail Over Deadly Canadian School Attack
A federal magistrate judge has ordered a Washington state woman detained pending trial on charges she conspired in one of the deadliest school shootings in Canadian history, ABC News US reports.
Melody Bryant, also known as James Cody Bryant, of Bellingham, was charged this month in U.S. District Court in Seattle with conspiring to murder people in a foreign country. Investigators allege she helped Jesse Van Rootselaar, who in February killed eight people and wounded 27 in the mountain community of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia.
According to a criminal complaint, Bryant declined to report Van Rootselaar's plans to authorities, agreed to distribute a livestream of the attack, transferred money to him, and advised him on how to delete online communications to conceal the plot.
At a detention hearing Tuesday, Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler said she did not believe any conditions — including internet restrictions — would be sufficient to protect the community if Bryant were released before trial.
Bryant has not entered a plea. Her public defender, Greg Murphy, argued for her release, pointing out that federal agents first interviewed her within days of the February attack and permitted her to remain free for the following seven months. He also noted that even after the complaint was filed against her on Oct. 2, the government waited four days before taking her into custody.
"There is no evidence that suggests any new danger to the community in the last seven months since the government first interviewed her," Murphy said in court.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg countered that the charge itself carried a legal presumption of detention. "The defendant was, over the course of months, in daily communication with someone who was planning a mass murder event in British Columbia," Greenberg told the judge. "Bryant chose not to intervene."
Murphy said he had not yet received the evidence necessary to fully evaluate the government's case.
Authorities say Van Rootselaar killed his mother and stepbrother at home before driving to the nearby Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where he shot and killed five children aged 12 and 13 and an educational assistant. Van Rootselaar was later found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Tumbler Ridge lies in the Canadian Rockies, more than 1,000 kilometers northeast of Vancouver, near the border with Alberta. The provincial government lists the secondary school as enrolling roughly 175 students in grades 7 through 12.
Separately, families of victims have filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. federal court against artificial intelligence company OpenAI, seeking to hold the maker of ChatGPT liable for failing to alert police to the shooter's interactions with the chatbot before the attack.
Source: ABC News US