Note, this article contains details that some will find hard to process. Feel free to ignore if you are having issues processing. The salient details are simply a Bellingham, WA resident was arrested for his role in counselling the shooter, agreeing to broadcast the attack and even providing money to the shooter.
Also note that I am not using the name of the shooter anymore, as there is evidence that this was done to become infamous; I choose to not participate in that process.
On October 6, James Cody Bryant, a resident of Bellingham, WA, was arrested on criminal complaint charging “conspiracy to murder persons in a foreign country” for their role in the Feb 10 tragedy.
According to the United States Department of Justice, Bryant was in frequent communication with the shooter in the six months leading up to the school shooting that killed six people and seriously injured others.
The criminal complaint details several different ways Bryant encouraged and aided the shooter’s plan including agreeing to broadcast the attack and providing the shooter money to buy a lighter (which was apparently used in an improvised explosive device) and a new pair of shoes.
The pair apparently met while using the social media site Omegle sometime prior to 2023, when the shooter was 14 or 15 years old, and stayed in contact on and off since then.
Omegle was shut down in 2023 after being sued by a victim of child sexual exploitation, and there are no records of their earlier conversation, but they later took it elsewhere, including Discord, where the shooter was hoping to livestream the shooting.
This was not a snap decision, by either the shooter or Bryant, and according to court filings, the two had been in discussion since August 2025.
“On or about August 30, 2025,” says the filing Bryant assisted [the shooter] in testing the quality of the livestream that [the shooter] intended to make of the planned murders. Bryant assured [the shooter] that it ‘looks solid.’
Bryant also gave the shooter tactical advice. According to the court filings, Bryant told the shooter: “Hallways also mean a lot of ways people can escape. Corners to turn. Wide open spaces means numbers.” As well as saying that the shooter “should have a handgun . . . this is smart,” saying that the shooter had “solid plans.”
About two weeks before the incident, Bryant sent $14.33 to the shooter via PayPal. That money was used to purchase a lighter “that would be affixed to an explosive device that the shooter planned to detonate during the murders.”
And, while Bryant had earlier expressed misgivings about the plan, on the day of the shooting, Bryant accessed the livestream “for the purpose of recording and broadcasting it.”
In addition to the co-conspirator, there was new information about the actual event that had previously been unreleased. The shooter, for instance, manufactured an improvised explosive device, which they lit and tossed while near the library. The device exploded, leaving “obvious blast marks.”
This device had previously gone unmentioned or redacted in previous RCMP releases.
Also, the shooter apparently tried to gain access to other rooms after finding the library open and shooting the victims there.
“The shooter then attempted to gain access to other parts of the school but was deterred by locked doors. They fired numerous shots into several of the doors. At that time, local police entered the school and encountered the shooter, [who] shot at the officers and then retreated into an empty room.” It was here that the shooter died of an apparent self-inflicted wound.
Shortly after the investigation began, the RCMP established that shortly before the school shooting, the shooter logged in to Twitch and initiated a video livestream. FBI agent Joseph Rico says he watched the livestream, sitting in a vehicle “with a rifle and another long gun in her lap. The livestream lasted approximately 20 seconds before it was disconnected. According to records obtained from Twitch, the livestream was viewed by only one Twitch account.”
This account, apparently, belonged to Bryant.
Discord voluntarily provided information to the RCMP, who subsequently shared the information with the FBI. According to the company, the shooter had been communicating with a user known as “meldritch_”.
According to Rico, “Discord’s review of the user’s communications demonstrates that the perpetrator discussed preparation and coordination relating to the shooting in Discord direct messages from November 2025 to February 10, 2026 via direct message with a second Discord user with the username meldritch_; these conversations included discussions about weapons, theft of ammunition, incendiary device construction, target evaluation, logistics relating to livestreaming the attack, and final day-of coordination.”
While the arrest was made on October 6, nearly eight months after the attack, Bryant has been known to authorities almost from the beginning. Two days after the Tumbler Ridge school shooting, Homeland Security Investigations Special Agents interviewed Bryant at Bryant’s residence in Bellingham.
“Bryant admitted to being the user of the ‘meldritch_ Discord account,” says Rico. “Bryant further confirmed that Bryant had been communicating with the Shooter during the months prior to the murders and had viewed the attempted livestream of the attack.”
On March 3, 2026, Rico and other FBI Special Agents interviewed Bryant at Bryant’s residence in Bellingham, discovering that the two had known each other for about three years, though communication had been sporadic, as the shooter had been institutionalized twice in that time. But starting about six months before the shooting, they began to communicate daily. Bryant describes the shooter as “significantly worse, including increasingly angry and suicidal. [They] often spoke about planning to use guns to murder family members and others because she felt she had been mistreated.”
Approximately six months prior to the Tumbler Ridge school shooting, the shooter told Bryant that she had stolen guns and ammunition from her family’s gun safe and was hiding them in her room in preparation for a mass shooting, and had convinced another person to purchase ammunition on her behalf.”
One of the guns has previously been described as “modified”. According to Rico, Bryant had been told that there was a “3D printed foregrip, firearm magazines, and a “switch” for one of the weapons, which apparently converts it to fully automatic.”
There was also a 3D printed silencer.
The shooter was fixated on other mass shootings, and watched recordings of previous past shootings “to learn from them,” according to Bryant. Bryant agreed to record the stream and re-broadcast it to “placate” the shooter.
According to Bryant, the shooter purchased a tactical chest rig designed to carry additional firearm magazines. “During the test of the livestream, they mounted a cell phone to the chest rig. Bryant viewed the test livestream and confirmed that the stream was functional, and the cell phone orientation provided a viewable angle.”
According to Bryant, the two spoke about selecting a target location for the mass shooting. The shooter wanted a location that would lead to “the largest number of victims,” saying a school would be an attractive target. Bryant told the shooter that a school would be a bad idea, as there would be “too many young victims,” suggesting a grocery store or church as an alternative location.
Bryant admitted to being in contact with the shooter over Discord the day of the shooter, and knew the shooting was planned for that day, however, Bryant says this was the third time the shooting was going to happen. Previously, the shooter had got cold feet. While the thought of committing the murders didn’t seem to bother the shooter, the thought of committing suicide.
But on Februray 10, Bryant received a message saying the shooter had killed two family members and was preparing to go to the school, then received a livestream link. Bryant started to record, but the link went down shortly thereafter.
More tragically, the shooter sent a note to Bryant saying “I can’t figure out how to start the car help.” It appears the shooter had never driven a car, and didn’t even know how to start it. Instead of refusing to help, Bryant offered advice on how to start the car.
While Bryant showed the FBI pictures of the shooter, they declined to share their Discord chats, which the FBI were able to get a warrant for on March 13.
The following are excerpts from these Discord chats.
The shooter was well aware of what they were doing. The Discord chats show they were aware of previous shootings.
“The deadliest school shooting in Canada happened in 1989 and 14 people died, they were all female students because the shooter hated women and feminism and was misogynist. It was at École Polytechnic. Means if I managed to cause more than 14 deaths on a school ground like a college or sum it would make it the deadliest school shooting in all of Canadian history even if I didn’t surpass the Nova Scotia killings. Getting 14 kills is a lot easier than getting 22, though if I got more than 22 it’d be simply the deadliest shooting in Canadian history period. So if I got over 5 that’d steal that title.”
The shooter considered going to Dawson Creek, Fort St. John or Prince George instead of Tumbler Ridge, and even discussed getting a hotel so they could time the shooting for when the area was most active. Walmart or Costco were considered, but rejected for being “too wide open. Plus, I don’t wanna die in a shitty Walmart I’d rather a mall because at least that’s a nice place to buy things lol.”
The shooter claims (in a message from August 2025) that they wanted to avoid “doing a school,” but in the end it proved “ideal.” They considered going to the Dawson Campus of Northern Light College, which was 1.6 km from the police station. “Out of the places I’ve looked at this seems to give me the best chance at getting a lot of time to shoot before the cops show up.”
Two weeks before the incident, the shooter sent this message: “I wish I was closer to the people who deserved to be punished. Not just randos in my town in the middle of nowhere. There are so many people who are. They’re close to the valuable targets yet they sit there doing nothing. If you’re gonna kill yourself why die like a loser and meaninglessly? At least do something.”
Livestreaming the event was important to the shooter, and the two conspirators ran a number of tests.
“As I get a single kill on camera,” said the shooter, “I don’t mind [if the quality is poor.] Like the buffalo shooting livestream sucked ass, it was so laggy but it tuned back in and just the right times to catch quite a few key moments of the shooting. It was mostly only 15 seconds worth of the actual shooting itself that got through though lol. But just that lil brief windo of connection it had was enough, has cemented the video in history.”
The shooter was quite concerned that Bryant not “snitch”.
“I could. I don’t want to honestly. I know I can like, save lives I guess but idk,” wrote Bryant. To which the shooter responded. “Why do those lives even matter? They don’t to me, clearly.”
On Feb 10, the shooter shot her mother and 11-year-old brother, then went to TRSS and shot and killed five students, aged 12 to 13, as well as a teacher’s assistant and wounded two others.
A preliminary hearing for the case is set for Oct. 20. If the grand jury indicts, there will be a separate hearing. Bryant faces up to life in prison and $25,000 in fines. The prosecution has asked that Bryant be denied bail. A hearing into that will happen on October 13.
The RCMP says they are not releasing any more details as the investigation is ongoing and they are not ruling out future charges.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
