by Jill Foster, Telegraph
News that the Canada school attacker was transitioning has raised concerns about the role of medication in other recent killings
For some, the moment the perpetrator of Canada’s worst school shooting in 30 years was described as a “female in a dress”, alarm bells started ringing. Speculation only intensified when a local police superintendent described the killer as a “gunperson” in a press briefing, a further indication that the killer might be transgender.
Now Jesse van Rootselaar, an 18-year-old resident of Tumbler Ridge, in British Columbia, has been identified as the murderer who left eight people dead – six at the school, and his mother and stepbrother – and another 27 people injured.
On Tuesday evening, the authorities confirmed the suspect was born a biological male but identified as female after “transitioning”. “I can say that Jesse was born as a biological male who, approximately six years ago, began to transition to female”, said Dwayne McDonald, the deputy commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in a press conference.
The Tumbler Ridge tragedy is just the latest mass shooting involving a trans-identified perpetrator in recent years. And the latest attack seems likely to reignite speculation among Republican figures in the US that transgender treatment is making people more likely to carry out such attacks. It comes months after it emerged that the US justice department was considering restricting transgender people from owning guns altogether.