More details have emerged about the U.S. suspect accused of encouraging and advising the B.C. teenager who shot and killed multiple people in Tumbler Ridge earlier this year.
Court documents reveal the 30-year-old from Bellingham, Wash., was closely connected to the shooter online for months.
Global News knocked on the door of the unit where James Cody Bryant lived, but the person living there responded from behind the door, saying they did not want to comment.
Bryant, who according to authorities is trans and identifies as female, was arrested at the complex in Bellingham by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday.
“I guess I’m kind of stunned,” neighbour Preston Coffelt said.
“It’s not something I’d expect to happen two buildings down.”
Bryant appeared in a Seattle courtroom on Tuesday on a federal felony charge of conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country.
U.S. authorities have released months of alleged online correspondence between Bryant and B.C. teenager Jesse Van Rootselaar before and during the massacre on Feb. 10 in which eight people were killed.
The claims have not yet been tested in court.
The two had met online about three years earlier, investigators said. Van Rootselaar was about 15 at the time, while Bryant was about 27.
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They met on the now-defunct Omegle messaging app, which enabled conversations with strangers but was closed down not long afterwards over lawsuits about child safety.
The two fell out of contact when Van Rootselaar was institutionalized after setting their room on fire. After that, they spoke daily in the six months before the murders, the FBI said.
“One thing that surfaced pretty soon after the shooting occurred was the company Discord identified some connections between the shooter and an individual in the United States, and notified the Canadian authorities — the RCMP,” said W. Mike Herrington, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Seattle.
“RCMP reached out to U.S. authorities, and we immediately began looking into this individual in the United States to see, you know, what was going on there.”
Discord is an online messaging and chat platform in which users can create different communities, like a hybrid between Slack and Reddit. It was initially built for gamers but is now used for many different purposes, such as social group communications.
Discord’s website says it collects certain information from users, including content users created.
“What Discord identified was a series of conversations that were dating back months or even years, where the shooter and the individual in the United States had ongoing discussions — a rather voluminous amount of discussions,” he added.
“This was their primary means of communicating, and they communicated quite regularly.”
Herrington said the FBI interviewed Bryant two days after the shooting in Tumbler Ridge.
The U.S. complaint against Bryant alleges the two spent months discussing tactics, locations and weaponry for the attack on Discord before they attempted to livestream the murders on Twitch.
The FBI said Van Rootselaar communicated online with Bryant, even sending photos on Discord showing what they were wearing for the attack.
Neighbours and coworkers say Bryant, who has asked to be identified as female in court proceedings, presented as one in everyday life.
“When you’re dressing like a girl, you’ve got your long hair and your fingernails done, you just assume,” neighbour Rodney Green said.
Bryant’s boss at a local McDonald’s said they were a reliable employee who worked at the fast food location for several years.
The manager told Global News their staff are shaken by the FBI allegations that Bryant entertained Van Rootselaar’s musings on achieving mass shooter notoriety and causing maximum damage.
Bryant was allegedly more concerned about not being caught, telling Rootselaar, “I think we should find a way to delete all our messages.”
“What we did see was, at some points, a bit of mixed feelings about this,” Herrington said. “But ultimately, Bryant was fully supportive to the point of providing, not just emotional support, but advice, financial support, material support to purchase items.”
“As well as ultimately, when it came down to it, made a very strong and repeated commitment to Van Rootselaar to conceal this plan and the impending attack from law enforcement before it occurred.”
Eight people, including six children, were killed in Tumbler Ridge before Van Rootselaar died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
They were Abel Mwansa, Ezekiel Schofield, Kylie Smith, Zoey Benoit, Ticaria Lampert, Shannda Aviugana-Durand, Emmett Jacobs and Jennifer Jacobs.
With files from The Canadian Press
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