Juno News - Canadians mourn after mass shooting in B.C.

00:00:00.000 Well, flags are at half-mast across Canada in honor of the victims of a mass shooting

00:00:11.220 at a secondary school in northeastern British Columbia.

00:00:15.100 Ten people are dead, including the suspected shooter, two dozen others injured in the small

00:00:20.820 mining community of Tumblr Ridge.

00:00:23.960 Now, Juneau News was the first to identify the gunman as 17-year-old Jesse Strang, a transgender

00:00:31.580 student believed to have died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

00:00:36.760 Here is one harrowing account by a parent who spoke to Rebel News.

00:00:40.960 Like, we, yeah, we got off lucky today.

00:00:44.880 My two kids that were in school were probably in the best part of the school to be at at

00:00:51.920 the time.

00:00:54.540 My one son, he's in grade 11.

00:00:56.640 He's in mechanics class.

00:01:00.320 And, I mean, they didn't really hear the shooting, and, you know, they heard the alarms go off,

00:01:06.520 and they barricaded themselves in.

00:01:10.180 Yeah, they had the welding tables and everything put up against the doors and barricaded themselves

00:01:16.220 in, uh, my middle child, she, uh, uh, they, they heard something, they thought it was fireworks

00:01:25.300 at first or something, and, uh, then someone came running down, hide, hide, or something,

00:01:31.160 had, and they, they all scurried and hide in the, so these, uh, storage closets in the classroom.

00:01:40.200 And, uh, and then my youngest, she's, uh, homeschooled, but, uh, I believe it was five of her friends

00:01:49.540 are the ones that got shot.

00:01:51.060 Oh, my gosh.

00:01:53.180 Oh, my gosh.

00:01:54.580 Yeah.

00:01:54.800 Were they all together at the time?

00:01:57.600 Yep.

00:01:58.880 Yeah, they were all in the library.

00:02:00.120 Another parent posted this message online.

00:02:05.940 I'm writing this post sitting in Vancouver Children's Hospital while my daughter fights for her life.

00:02:13.020 The day started as any other.

00:02:15.460 Now, however, my 12-year-old daughter is fighting for her life while they try to repair the damage

00:02:21.380 from a gunshot wound to the head and one to the neck.

00:02:26.700 She was a lucky one, I suppose.

00:02:30.120 Now, Prime Minister Carney canceled his trip to Europe on the news.

00:02:34.400 Let's listen.

00:02:34.880 Uh, it's obviously a very difficult day for the nation this morning.

00:02:39.500 Uh, parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, in Tumblr Ridge will wake up without someone

00:02:48.340 they love.

00:02:48.760 The nation borns with you.

00:02:55.440 Canada stands by you.

00:02:58.700 I want to thank and pass on a number of world leaders who've reached out directly to me in

00:03:05.820 solidarity and compassion, France, United Kingdom, His Majesty himself, Norway, Finland, India, United Arab Emirates, many others.

00:03:20.280 The world is with you.

00:03:22.040 A conservative party leader, Pierre Polyev, had this to say.

00:03:26.560 We are all devastated by the news of this appalling shooting in Tumblr Ridge.

00:03:35.220 The fact that this took place at a secondary school makes it even more tragic.

00:03:43.540 As a father, I can't even imagine the phone calls that parents might have received.

00:03:49.180 I can't imagine the heartache and hell that they're living through at this moment.

00:03:54.620 Um, this is a time for all Canadians to unite, to support the families and the community at large.

00:04:02.940 Uh, we'll be in touch with the prime minister and the other parties later today to offer all of our support,

00:04:10.380 to work together and help the community in any way we can in this terrible time.

00:04:16.820 Uh, uh, this is a, I encourage all Canadians to pray for the community and pray for the family

00:04:22.260 as we go forward and take the necessary steps to support them.

00:04:27.100 Now, Juneau News reporter Cosman Georgia broke the story of the shooter's identity.

00:04:31.980 Welcome, Cosman.

00:04:32.940 Thanks for having me, Mark.

00:04:37.260 What's, what's the latest?

00:04:40.540 Yeah, so last night, um, obviously there was a lot of information and speculation circulating

00:04:47.820 about the shooter's identity.

00:04:50.060 Uh, some false negatives proposed, uh, but there were a lot of questions.

00:04:54.540 And I think those questions were spurred by the way the police framed this situation.

00:05:00.620 So the initial active shooter alert that went out to the community of Tumblr Ridge yesterday,

00:05:06.700 uh, and surrounding communities said that the suspect was described as a female wearing a dress.

00:05:15.820 Now, in B, some parts of BC, it's pretty warm, like for example, here on Vancouver Island,

00:05:21.500 it's about, it was about 10 degrees yesterday and sunny, but Tumblr Ridge is quite cold.

00:05:26.300 And I think, uh, a lot of the circumstances started to raise questions and asking about,

00:05:32.140 is this shooter in fact a male who might have been dressed as a woman or presenting as a female?

00:05:39.100 And so we looked into this information and we tracked down one individual, um,

00:05:47.180 who we thought was the suspect and contacted the direct family.

00:05:51.500 And this would be the direct family of Jesse Strang and his uncle, Russell.

00:05:57.660 And Russell confirmed that Jesse was in fact the shooter and that he was in fact his uncle.

00:06:05.740 And that's the information we went with, uh, to press.

00:06:11.100 I mean, there's, I believe, two dozen people who were injured, including, um, a young girl who

00:06:19.900 went to, ended up in Vancouver Children's Hospital. Do we have any information about those who were wounded?

00:06:27.660 So far, uh, the police are not providing much information, which is a huge frustration. And

00:06:36.460 that's why we see nobody in the legacy media is touching the, the suspect's identity, uh, or the

00:06:43.180 name of the suspect. And what they're falling back on is while the police haven't confirmed,

00:06:47.820 uh, in reality, it's the journalist's job to confirm information. The police are just one source of many,

00:06:54.380 uh, primary sources of information and incidents like these. Obviously it's a very tragic situation

00:07:01.740 and, uh, everybody's hearts go out to the victims involved in this.

00:07:06.860 And I suppose the connection to his identity, the way he identifies himself, the, the shooter,

00:07:15.820 there's a link there to other types of shootings that we've had, mass shootings in the United States,

00:07:21.100 um, involving people who are trans and the questions around the mental health of these people.

00:07:30.460 Is that being looked at right now to your knowledge? I know it's early, but.

00:07:35.580 Well, there are indications that this individual had quite a social media presence,

00:07:42.300 um, based on various links to a YouTube account, which was shared, uh, by his mother, Jennifer,

00:07:49.340 um, who is deceased. We have reason to believe. And yes. So the questions are, uh, about his mental

00:07:57.980 health, what motivated him to do this. I asked Russell, Jesse's uncle, were there any signs that

00:08:05.020 Jesse would do something like this? He did not respond to that message, although he did, uh, confirm

00:08:10.540 the other details we mentioned in our story.

00:08:12.860 Okay. Well, you've done tremendous work on the story as has, uh, judo news in general. And, uh,

00:08:20.540 we do appreciate that. I know you want to get right back to covering that, uh, that tragic,

00:08:25.900 well, horrendous, uh, mass shooting. So thank you very much for coming on the show, Cosmo.

00:08:32.140 Absolutely. Thanks, Mark.

00:08:34.540 Joining me now is security expert and bodyguard to the billionaires, Ross McClain. Ross,

00:08:39.420 welcome to the show. Yeah. Good to join you on this topic. And the only reason I say it's good,

00:08:45.020 Mark, is because I think I've got a lot to contribute for the public to know, to help

00:08:49.020 understand what exactly is going on with this horrific case.

00:08:53.260 Okay. Well, what is going on?

00:08:56.620 Well, look, as, as soon as this came out,

00:09:00.700 already suspected and knew what the whole thing was going to play out like. And there's a reason for

00:09:05.740 that there's more than a trend that goes on with these shootings. And let me qualify everything

00:09:13.820 I'm going to say here today with two, two different ways, Mark. So I worked in law enforcement,

00:09:18.620 right? I know the law enforcement, I know the response side of this, right? Where you react when

00:09:24.700 a shooting like this takes place, which by the way, it appears RCMP did a great job on scene in two

00:09:30.380 minutes of more to say about that. But I also work in the bodyguard business. And there your job is

00:09:37.340 preventing things like this from happening, right? You want to stop them from happening. And this was

00:09:43.660 something that clearly you have not looked at. We all know we're not discussing the elephant in the room.

00:09:51.100 We're not dealing with preventing these problems. Let me clarify that a little bit more.

00:09:56.060 If I have a client I'm protecting against, let's say, from the IRA, I'm going to say,

00:10:05.500 I'm going to look at the IRA and how they attack people, what they do, where they do it. I'm going

00:10:09.100 to know everything about them so I can prevent them from getting close to my client. I don't say,

00:10:13.020 oh, well, it's politically incorrect to describe the Irish as being part of the IRA. Therefore,

00:10:18.060 you can't discuss it. Therefore, don't consider that in your planning, right? That's ridiculous.

00:10:24.540 You have to call things for what they are if you're going to prevent them from happening.

00:10:28.780 And what I notice here is there's a complete lack of wanting to call this for everything that appears

00:10:34.940 to be the other ones. This is trans violence that was put on by somebody. And you know what? I don't 0.71

00:10:40.700 even necessarily blame this kid. He was molded into this, to a position where you know that this sort

00:10:48.140 of thing is going to happen. We all know it. That's the elephant in the room, Mark.

00:10:53.740 Yeah. And I guess when you add to that, the possibility that he was taking certain medications

00:11:00.300 that are involved in his transitioning, that all of this in a young man, a troubled young man,

00:11:06.460 an emotionally disturbed young man, you put it all together and you end up with the disaster that just

00:11:12.220 unfolded in Tumblr Ridge. But you're looking at a society, Mark, that took him down that road.

00:11:24.860 I mean, we can talk more about some of the things we need to do to prevent these sort of things,

00:11:29.580 but you need to have an inquiry into this and all the things that brought this to be.

00:11:35.500 Because I can listen for you. It's not hard.

00:11:37.420 I mean, from the police vantage point, for them to describe the shooter as a gun person,

00:11:46.860 that's not normally a phrase that you hear. But it just makes you look at the woke language and

00:11:55.900 extract from that the attitude of the police when they start using those types of terms and then

00:12:01.580 withholding elements of the shooter's identity and so forth. But thanks to social media and so forth,

00:12:08.700 we have evidence that this person was very troubled, talked about medications and their

00:12:16.940 transitioning and what a hard time this individual was having in that particular stretch. And unfortunately,

00:12:25.660 it ended in the way that it did. And I don't know, how do you begin to prevent this? I mean,

00:12:31.260 apart from taking added security measures within the schools, obviously, the government's going to use

00:12:37.420 this. At some point, they're going to politicize it like they did the Nova Scotia massacre and use

00:12:42.300 that to go after firearms. That's very typical of what they do. You know, the bodies weren't even cold

00:12:50.460 in greater Halifax when the government started exploiting that for political means. I hope that doesn't

00:12:56.780 happen in this case. But let's not lose sight of the possibility that it might. But what every parent

00:13:04.460 is thinking is, how do I avoid this at my kid's school? That's what they're thinking right now. Do

00:13:10.300 you have any words of advice to them apart from homeschooling? Yeah, well, I would have things I

00:13:17.020 could say to the parents and the bereavement and the shock that they're going through. But let me go back to

00:13:21.660 your original question about how do you start to monitor and deal with some of this. There's some

00:13:26.780 very foundational things you can do. But let me go up a little bit more from the foundation. We'll

00:13:31.020 talk about we're on the first floor here, Mark. When you have a child who's going through clearly

00:13:35.820 emotional distress, clearly deciding they want to transition their identity, clearly they're taking

00:13:42.540 drugs, that should be on the school's radar. Because it's the same thing as if you drive a car,

00:13:49.580 they rate you for your insurance, right? You're a male. Well, you're 16 years old,

00:13:54.140 just got your license. You got a lot of tickets. They're going to treat you differently, right?

00:13:59.580 Because the warning signs are there. And if you start seeing behavior problems, like there was

00:14:05.580 clearly according to social media, the great reporting, by the way, great reporting by Juneau News,

00:14:11.980 getting all the social media out, you wouldn't know nothing if you were watching mainstream news.

00:14:16.060 But, and you see these, as the behavior gets worse, you notify the police. You say,

00:14:22.780 hey, we got a kid here, behavior problems, on drugs, getting a little bit detached from reality.

00:14:28.780 Can you please check the home? See if the home has any weapons there. See if there's been any calls to

00:14:34.300 that home before for violence and bad behavior by the child. And just do a basic check so we can be

00:14:40.860 aware so we can protect everybody else. Because you know, it's going to go off the rails at a certain

00:14:47.340 point. It very likely is. So the schools need to be taking an active prevention in that. And the police,

00:14:53.900 I love the blue mark, as you know, they have to stop being so politically correct. And they have to

00:15:02.940 deal with these issues straight up. And I had not liked the communication from the police on this.

00:15:10.620 It sounds like, great, the call came in. RCMP was there in two minutes. We don't know much more

00:15:16.780 after that what happened, except they entered the school. And at some point, you know, this person

00:15:22.060 unaligned themselves. Was it three hours later? Because the police didn't clear it for four hours.

00:15:27.180 Or were they in there right away and they saw it? They saw that the person was dead. They clearly

00:15:32.860 didn't call an ambulance to take them away. Why are they not giving the information out to the public

00:15:38.300 so the public can deal with this? Police chiefs are allowed to do that when it's in the public interest.

00:15:44.940 So I think there needs to be way better communication. There's a call going on right

00:15:48.540 now, I don't know what's happening with it, in Brantford, Ontario. It says a high school is closed

00:15:53.420 down there. Police say, don't come near. Parents don't come to the school until we resolve this.

00:15:58.380 I can just imagine what those parents are thinking, right? What are they thinking is going on at that

00:16:02.940 school? So as long as we dance around naming the thing that needs to be named, that goes unnamed,

00:16:10.860 you're never going to be able to solve this problem, in my opinion.

00:16:15.020 I mean, they were in a fairly remote area. I mean, there were other communities in the area, but

00:16:21.500 I mean, you're talking about a small community that might not have access to the kinds of services,

00:16:28.780 social services that, say, you would get in Vancouver or Victoria. I mean, did that play a role

00:16:36.780 here, do you think? I mean, I'm not looking for scapegoats, but I'm not looking for justifications

00:16:43.580 as to why this happened. I think this was a heinous act, assuming it went down the way we believe it did.

00:16:49.500 But, you know, will the government look at trying to maybe improve services for people who are

00:16:57.340 quote-unquote transitioning in, you know, tiny communities like Tumblr Ridge?

00:17:04.300 Yeah, well, I'm going to take, once again, I'm going to give you my preventative side on that one,

00:17:10.940 Mark. And certainly they had enough social services there that he could see a doctor,

00:17:16.700 get prescribed all sorts of drugs for this. The doctor would have had to watch him and see what

00:17:21.820 was going on with him and still see what's going on to manage it. He was obviously influenced just

00:17:26.940 looking a lot by his online activities, getting involved in violence online and talking in the

00:17:32.780 Reddit subgroups about different issues. So my struggle is, is there enough there to help him

00:17:40.540 continue down a road that's going to cause him a lot of trouble? I think you need to help him

00:17:47.100 recognize the problem. You need to recognize the problem. And I say this, and I do not say this

00:17:53.900 without compassion. One thing that I do in my job, Mark, when I look at criminals, crimes, and motives,

00:18:01.900 I look at the identity of the person. And I can figure out a lot from their identity. When you're

00:18:07.260 confused about your identity, you've got a real problem. And to have schools and doctors helping to

00:18:16.060 confuse, you've got a real problem. I think it's much easier to give him mental health treatment,

00:18:23.180 to get him comfortable with the way his body was made that it is to try and change his body

00:18:29.660 to meet the struggles that he was having in his head.

00:18:35.180 That's me. I'm not a doctor, but you have to look at how you prevent.

00:18:39.820 Right. There was something that you said earlier about access to a firearm. I mean, in many of these

00:18:46.220 communities, you know, you do have a gun and it's not strange to have a firearm for a myriad of reasons

00:18:53.900 if you're in the country. But if you've got a child in the house that is clearly having emotional problems,

00:19:02.300 disturbed, online saying things, on medication, then does it make sense to get the firearm

00:19:17.020 to a place where that individual, a young person cannot access it?

00:19:21.660 Absolutely, it does. You have to deal with that reality. That's been the case

00:19:27.660 in several other mass school shootings. They come home and get the parents' gun and take it away.

00:19:33.420 You know, it's such a tough thing to talk about, right? It really is.

00:19:39.180 But you have to name the problem. You can't run away from the problem. We're seeing these kids that

00:19:46.060 are suffering through this. They have the highest rates of suicide of just about any group. Why? Well,

00:19:54.620 we know why, but we're continuing to encourage the problem. And it's become like a social... I don't

00:20:02.460 want to go too far afield from where I'm at, but it's just like anorexia. It was a socially

00:20:07.100 transmitted disease. That's what it was. They did a test where they went to the Far East,

00:20:12.140 Papua New Guinea. Nobody had a problem. None of the girls there had a problem with it. 1.00

00:20:16.140 They brought in TV. They showed all the skinny models. Anorexia broke out in Papua New Guinea,

00:20:21.340 right? There are some memes that are transmitted socially. And this is a child. He's 17 years old.

00:20:30.220 He apparently started this transition. He was 15, according to the online stuff that I'm seeing. That's a

00:20:35.980 child. He can't drive a car. We need to name this and deal with this. And, uh,

00:20:46.460 uh, I have to ask, well, I mean, are there those who feed into the idea that trans people are mistreated,

00:20:58.220 misunderstood? You know, your parents don't understand you, your friends. It's at school.

00:21:05.100 Other people at school don't understand you. It's their fault that you're miserable, that you're 0.99

00:21:10.940 feeling uncertain about who you are and what you are. And, you know, that sort of thing happens.

00:21:19.260 You know, there are people, there are

00:21:20.700 factions in this world that want to feed into that mindset almost to push these people over the edge.

00:21:29.660 And

00:21:31.420 do you think that that's a factor?

00:21:34.380 Well, absolutely. You have prominent politicians and activists who wear shirts that say things like

00:21:41.180 trans rights with a knife on it. You see, there's a whole lot of talk 0.99

00:21:47.260 in the trans community about, we will kill you if you get in our way, if you don't give us what we 1.00

00:21:53.260 want. I mean, that's just a fact. So if I was having to protect someone against someone who suffered 0.99

00:21:59.500 from this mental disease of trans, I would know all about them and I know how to prevent it. And I know 1.00

00:22:03.580 how to deal with it. It, it is when you, you know, when I used to protect the billionaires,

00:22:09.980 the worst ones I protected them against, Mark, the hardest ones for me were cases of mental illness.

00:22:15.180 I helped advise a lot of media people as well, too. A lot of people in media get fixated on

00:22:20.060 by people who sit at home and build up mental ideas in their head. And then they come and you,

00:22:24.780 they come at you from all kinds of angles. They're almost the, the trickiest to deal with.

00:22:30.060 If it was just a political ideology, you could deal with it differently. 1.00

00:22:34.540 You dealt with mentally ill billionaires. 1.00

00:22:36.620 Billionaires. That's is that maybe my phone cut mentally ill going after to attack billionaires. 1.00

00:22:43.420 Okay.

00:22:44.460 Some of them were now, most of them are very good.

00:22:47.980 Well, Ross, I thank you for coming on the show. I mean, you really provided some great insights into

00:22:55.580 this whole thing. I don't know if there are any answers yet. People will be grappling for answers.

00:23:01.500 They'll look at things like services. They'll look at things like firearm access. Unfortunately,

00:23:07.820 you know, legal firearms owners are going to once again be put in the crosshairs,

00:23:13.340 figuratively or metaphorically speaking, by people who somehow blame

00:23:18.540 access. You know, the, the fact that we have access to firearms, legal firearms in this country,

00:23:23.900 illegal. I mean, let's face facts. All these things are going to be grappled over, over the next

00:23:28.540 weeks. And at the end of the day, when the smoke clears and the stories have stopped,

00:23:34.620 you're going to have families grieving the loss for the rest of their lives. I mean,

00:23:38.700 there are families whose lives were destroyed as a result of this thing. And we can never forget those

00:23:44.060 people. It is the apple of their eye, the work that people put into their children. Trust me. I work

00:23:50.940 with counselors. I understand PTSD. I seen cops that have ended their lives because maybe they attended a

00:23:57.420 call like this and what they saw. It is traumatic, traumatic. But back to your point there, you can't

00:24:05.260 blame the gun. It's the person with the gun. This could have been done with a car. We've seen cars

00:24:11.100 for ideology drive through and kill people. You have to deal with and name the problem. All of this,

00:24:17.580 trying to work around the outside of it, you're never going to deal with it. And these kids that are

00:24:23.180 going through these struggles, they need the right kind of help. I believe they closed the one

00:24:29.260 transitioning place over in England, the Tavistock, it was called, because they could not believe the

00:24:35.740 work that they were doing in there. And I think the US has ended it in a lot of states. They're shutting

00:24:41.100 down, doing a lot of this, because you know what the problem is. You're going to wreck these kids.

00:24:46.860 You're going to wreck them. And the incidence is just too high for damage to the kids, as opposed to

00:24:54.380 helping and someone's going to go on and have a great normal life moving forward. You got to name it.

00:25:00.860 You got to name it, Mark. How do people access your terrific content online, Ross?

00:25:05.900 They can catch me at McLean Chronicles on my YouTube. And I try to do on there what I'm

00:25:13.180 doing here. I try and call the balls and strikes. And life is hard, Mark. It's hard. But nothing's

00:25:20.700 harder than those parents that have to bury those kids. Absolutely. And our condolences go to all of

00:25:25.980 them. Sad day indeed. Ross, thank you for coming on the show.

00:25:33.980 And if you enjoyed this show, consider supporting great independent journalism,

00:25:38.620 where breaking news stories are told by going to junonews.com backslash straight up. The name of

00:25:46.700 this show, junonews.com backslash straight up. It helped us a great deal. Thank you.

Juno News - February 11, 2026

Canadians mourn after mass shooting in B.C.

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