Image of far-right influencer misrepresented as Tumbler Ridge shooter
- Published on February 12, 2026 at 23:30
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP Canada
A swarm of prominent social media accounts are claiming an image of an individual posing with a firearm while wearing a pink tank top and red skirt shows the 18-year-old identified by police as the perpetrator of Canada's deadliest shooting in decades. But the picture is an altered version of an old photo of Vrillium, a far-right online commentator, who posted on Instagram that he was not the Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia shooter.
"Transgender shooter who murdered 9 in Canada," says a February 11, 2026 post on X and Instagram from "@Breaking911," a widely followed account that AFP has previously fact-checked for spreading misinformation.
Similar posts spread across X and other platforms, in English as well as Spanish.
Among those amplifying the image were several prominent right-wing accounts, including the anonymous users "@0hour1," who falsely implicated a Palestinian student in the December 2025 shooting at Brown University, and "@alphafox," who previously told CNN he took money from a pro-Kremlin propagandist to spread Russian disinformation about the 2024 US election.
The posts came after Canadian police on February 11, 2026 identified Jesse Van Rootselaar, a transgender woman, as the shooter who opened fire the day prior on a school in the remote mining town of Tumbler Ridge, in British Columbia province.
Police said the suspect -- who killed her mother and stepbrother and shot dead six other people at a school -- was a high school dropout who had been visited several times by law enforcement over mental health concerns (archived here). She was found dead at the school from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have not released any official photos of the suspect -- and declined to respond to requests to confirm the identities of individuals in the many photos circulating on social media.
But the image depicting a gun-wielding person in a pink tank top is unrelated.
Comments on social media connected the photo to Vrillium, a self-described "dirtbag nationalist" who appears to be linked to the Groypers, a far-right movement affiliated with white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
In a February 11 story on Instagram, where his name is listed as William Sexton, Vrillium shared the image and wrote: "Insane I have to say this: No, I'm not the trans shooter from Canada."
On X, Vrillium further acknowledged that he is the person in the image and replied to some users to clarify that he was "not the shooter." In one post referencing an American comedian who is commonly blamed for shootings as part of a long-running internet hoax, Vrillium wrote: "Bro cmon don't Sam Hyde me here."
AFP reached out for additional comment via an Instagram direct message, but no response was immediately forthcoming.
Reverse image searches revealed earlier versions of the photo had circulated in December 2025 as X users unearthed old posts from the X account "@BillySexton2013," which the users connected to Vrillium (archived here and here).
The earlier versions show Vrillium posing differently and holding a guitar, rather than a firearm. A review of the "@BillySexton2013" account found the original photo posted in February 2020, in which he was indeed holding a musical instrument (archived here).
As the photo resurfaced in December 2025, Vrillium acknowledged on X that people had "found an old twitter of mine" and claimed the exposure was in response to his attacks on US Vice President JD Vance.
AFP could not determine where the altered version misrepresented after the Tumbler Ridge shooting originated.
AFP identified another individual falsely tied to the shooting here.
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