A 15-year-old student named Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow has been identified as the suspected school shooter who opened fire at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, on Monday.
The shooting killed a teacher and a fellow student while injuring six others. She is believed to have taken her own life before law enforcement showed up on the scene. Investigators are now looking into Rupnow’s potential motive, where she got the handgun used in the attack, and whether there were possible warning signs leading up to the incident.
Law enforcement is “trying to determine what [Rupnow’s father] knew or may have not known about what happened today,” said Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes, according to ABC 6 Action News.
The authorities were alerted about the shooting when a second grader dialed 911.
Barbara Wiers, the director of elementary and school relations for Abundant Life Christian School
The school does not have metal detectors or a school resource officer, but has other security protocols in place, including cameras, she said.
“Prior To the start of the school year, we had a retraining. We train on this. We do lockdown drills, we do evacuation drills as part of our standard drill protocols. Our students are versed in that. Our faculty are well versed in that,” she explained. “The training that we did with [Madison Police Department] at the very beginning of the year, prior to the students returning to campus, had some new updates, and so we had looked at some of those things. So I think everything was very fresh for our faculty.”
“I cannot, cannot tell you how well our students did in that process. They were clearly scared when they realized -- when we practice, we always say, ‘This is a drill, it is just a drill.’ When they heard, ‘Lockdown, lockdown,’ and nothing else, they knew it was real,” Wiers said, adding: “But they handled themselves brilliantly.”
The shooting happened during study hall. “Shortly before 11 a.m., while inside a classroom during a study hall of students from mixed grades, she pulled out a handgun and opened fire,” CNN reported.
The students “left the training center immediately and came down here—doing in real time what they were actually practicing for,” Chief Barnes noted.
Barnes said that the suspected shooter’s motive was not yet known, but a copy of her manifesto has been circulating on social media.
In the document, Rupnow expresses contempt for her parents and humanity as a whole.
I hate seeing people on a daily basis, just being so sensitive. Gives me one more reason to take off my glasses.
The human scum is color, and the way people are raised. I’ve grown around people who do not care or give one single care in the world and smoke their lungs out with weed or drink as much as they can like my own father.
I’ve grown to hate people, and society, it’s truly not my fault though, it never was. But all of you and the world have done to me is pick and tease me, you’ve pushed me into a corner with no help whatsoever.
Humanity is filth and I don’t like filth nor want to live in it nor should anyone else, and I know it follows me and how it has followed me and will follow everyone because of how the world is run.
President Joe Biden issued a statement saying, “We cannot continue to accept senseless violence that traumatizes children, their families, and tears entire communities apart.”
He also took the opportunity to push for more gun control laws.
My administration has taken aggressive action to combat the gun violence epidemic. We passed the most significant gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years, I have taken more executive action to reduce gun violence than any other President in history, and I created the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. But more is needed. Congress must pass commonsense gun safety laws: Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Others on the left used the shooting to push for gun control as well.