Tumbler Ridge Family Cancels Daughter’s Funeral Over Death Threats

How does a grieving family go from planning their child’s funeral to hiding in a safe house?

Lance Younge and Jenny Geary found out this weekend. Their 12-year-old daughter Kylie Smith died in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting on February 10. Five young lives were lost that day.

Now they’re cancelling Kylie’s funeral. Death threats forced them into hiding.

The parents posted about it on Facebook Saturday. The Tumbler Ridge Chamber of Commerce shared their message. Police moved the family to a “safe location” while they investigate.

“We’re so sorry we had to cancel Kylie’s service today. We saw how hard everyone was working on it. From what we’re hearing, we’re at least the third family of the deceased to be harassed or threatened by people from their past since this awful tragedy took place. Like we aren’t all dealing with enough already. Crazy.”

Someone’s Hunting Grieving Families

Here’s what’s really messed up about this whole thing.

The Smith family isn’t alone. They’re the third family getting threatened since the shooting. In a town of fewer than 3,000 people, that’s a pattern. Someone’s deliberately going after families who just lost their kids.

Think about that timing. These parents buried their children three weeks ago. Now they can’t even hold a proper funeral service because somebody’s threatening to hurt them. What kind of person does that?

The shooting itself was brutal enough. A gunman killed Kylie’s mother and half-brother at home first. Then she went to the school. Five students died. One educational assistant died. The shooter killed herself. Six people total, including the gunman.

But here’s the thing that makes these threats even worse – they’re coming from “people from their past.” Not random internet trolls. People who actually know these families.

People with grudges, maybe. Or scores to settle.

That’s terrifying. When your neighbours turn on you during the worst moment of your life.

Police Are Taking This Seriously

Staff Sergeant Kris Clark confirmed they’re investigating. He’s not messing around with this one.

“The RCMP is aware of threats that have circulated online and within the community and we can confirm that an investigation is underway. A safety plan is in place for the individual(s) and community as the investigation continues.”

When cops say they’ve got a “safety plan” for both individuals and the whole community? That means they think these threats are real.

You don’t relocate multiple families to safe houses over some angry Facebook comments.

Clark didn’t get into specifics about what exactly people are threatening to do (to put it lightly). Smart move, probably. But the fact they’re treating this as credible danger tells you everything you need to know.

The threats are spreading online and around town. In a place like Tumbler Ridge, word travels fast. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. That makes it harder to track down who’s making threats, but also means there are probably witnesses.

Moving victim families to undisclosed locations isn’t cheap or easy. Especially in a community this small. You’ve got to coordinate with other agencies, find places to house them, make sure nobody knows where they went. That’s a massive resource commitment.

No word yet on arrests. But with multiple families affected and threats still circulating, you can bet the RCMP is feeling pressure to wrap this up quickly.

A Funeral That Never Happened

Kylie was supposed to have her day Saturday.

The family had to disappoint everyone who’d been working on the service. In small towns like this, planning a funeral becomes a community effort. People donate time, money, flowers, food. They rearrange their weekends to show up and pay respects.

Good luck with that.

All of that work, cancelled. Because someone couldn’t let a grieving family bury their daughter in peace.

The Chamber of Commerce sharing the family’s statement shows how the business community rallied around the victims. In places like Tumbler Ridge, the chamber often becomes the unofficial communications hub when something terrible happens.

They’ve got the social media reach and the community connections to get word out fast.

Community members had been preparing what should’ve been a celebration of Kylie’s life. Instead, fear took that away from everyone.

“Mostly, we’re sorry to you, Kylie.

Our girl. This was supposed to be your day,” the family wrote directly to their dead daughter. You can feel the heartbreak in those words. They couldn’t even give her a proper goodbye.

But they made a promise: “I promise we will give you the most lovely, beautiful event when the time is right. We love you so much and we will do right by you, I promise.”

That’s determination right there. They’re not letting the threats win permanently.

When Small Towns Break

Tumbler Ridge sits in northeastern BC, about 280 kilometers southwest of Fort St. John. Coal mining built this place in the 1980s. The town’s weathered economic ups and downs before.

Nothing like this, though.

Population around 2,800 according to recent census data (no, seriously). Six deaths means they lost more than 0.2 percent of everyone who lives there. Scale that up to Vancouver and you’re talking about losing over 1,000 people.

In towns this size, everyone’s connected somehow. Family, friends, work, sports teams, church groups. Each death touches dozens of households directly.

The high school isn’t just where kids go to class. It’s where the community holds basketball games, concerts, graduations, Christmas pageants. Now that building’s contaminated in everyone’s mind.

How do you send your kid back there?

And now they’ve got a second wave of trauma hitting. Just when people were starting to process what happened, victim families are getting threatened. Neighbours are turning on each other. The social fabric’s tearing apart.

Read that again.

The fact that threats are coming from “people from their past” makes it worse. External threats, you can blame on outsiders. This is internal. This is your own community attacking itself when it should be healing.

Trust breaks down fast in situations like this. If someone’s threatening the victim families, who else might they target? Are my kids safe? Is my family next?

What This Means Beyond Tumbler Ridge

This ranks as one of Canada’s deadliest school attacks ever.

You’re looking at the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal. The 1975 Centennial Secondary School shooting in Brampton. Now Tumbler Ridge.

Five students and one staff member makes this the worst school violence in BC history.

But the harassment of victim families afterward? That’s new territory for Canada. We’ve learned how to respond to mass violence in the immediate aftermath. Crisis counselors, media management, community vigils.

We’ve got protocols for that stuff now.

Nobody planned for this though. Secondary victimization that goes on for weeks. Threats that force funeral cancellations. Families hiding in safe houses a month after their kids died.

Canadian schools, especially in small communities, operate under assumptions of safety that this shooting destroyed. Tumbler Ridge Secondary probably had minimal security compared to urban schools. Why would they need more? Nothing ever happens in places like this.

Except when it does.

The online component makes this trickier too. If threats are spreading through social media, that’s a federal jurisdiction issue. Local RCMP might need help from cybercrime units, maybe even CSIS if there’s any terrorism angle.

Education officials across the country are probably reviewing their crisis plans right now. Not just how to respond to an active shooter, but how to protect entire families afterward. How do you keep victim relatives safe when the initial danger is over but new threats emerge?

Federal officials have already gotten involved. OpenAI reps got called to Ottawa after the shooting. That suggests concerns about how online platforms handle harassment and threats in crisis situations.

For other small communities watching this unfold, it’s a wake-up call. Mass violence can happen anywhere. And the trauma doesn’t stop when the shooting stops.

What This Means Going Forward

Moving families to safe houses while cancelling funerals? That’s unprecedented in Canadian history. We’ve never had to do ongoing threat management like this after a school shooting.

Which means law enforcement is dealing with something more serious than typical online harassment. This isn’t grief-induced community tensions or internet trolling. This is something else entirely.