A teacher and a student were killed Monday morning after a 15-year-old female student at a private Christian school in Madison, Wis., opened fire, police said. The suspect was also pronounced dead at the scene.
Madison police received a 911 call from a second grader at Abundant Life Christian School, a K-12 academy with approximately 390 students, at 10:57 a.m. CT alerting them about a shooting. When they arrived at the scene, they found the suspect, identified by Madison police as Natalie Rupnow, with a gunshot wound. She died in transit to a hospital, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said at a Monday night news conference.
“A teacher and a teenage student were pronounced dead at the scene at that school,” Barnes said. “Six other students and a teacher were injured and taken to area hospitals. Two students remain in critical condition and have life-threatening injuries.”
Another teacher and three additional students were treated for “non-life-theatening injuries” and two of them have been since been released from the hospital.
“At this time we believe there was only one shooter involved,” Barnes said.
At an earlier press conference, police said they had recovered the weapon used in the shooting, which Barnes said took place in a classroom study hall made up of “students of mixed grades.”
The suspect
The motive for the shooting is under investigation and the family of the suspect, who went by the name Samantha, has been cooperating with police, Barnes said.
Barnes also said that nothing “suggested that the school was a place where violence would occur” and added that he was not aware of any prior contact the suspect may have had with police.
“Everyone wants to know what led up to this,” Barnes said. “Are there any additional threats to public safety? Is this person, or was this person, by themselves? There are a lot of questions that we want to answer, but we have to answer the safety questions first.”
Barnes said the evidence suggests that Rupnow died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound but that an official cause of death would be determined by a medical examiner.
“A document about this shooting is circulating [at] this time on social media but we have not verified its authenticity,” Barnes said.
Asked how Rupnow had procured the gun used in the shooting, Barnes said “That’s something that will be a part of this investigation.”
Anxious moments for parents
Police evacuated students from the school, then transported them by bus to a nearby health clinic that acted as a “reunification center” where their families could come and pick them up.
Rob Nelson was first alerted to the shooting by a text from his 14-year-old daughter, who wrote “not a drill … we heard popping,” the Washington Post reported.
Waiting to be reunited with her 12-year-old son, Viktoriya Gonzales, told the New York Times that she learned he was safe but that he had been “severely traumatized, because he was right by the shooter.”
‘This should never happen’
In a nation that has already recorded more than 300 school shootings in 2024, the mood among the officials at Monday’s press conference was of disbelief that the trend had finally come to Madison.
“I’m feeling a little dismayed now, so close to Christmas,” Barnes said. “Every child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever.”
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway echoed the grim reality her community now faces.
“I am on record that I think we need to do better in our country and our community to prevent gun violence. And I hoped that this day would never come in Madison,” Rhodes-Conway said at the press conference. “It is not something that any mayor, any fire chief, any police chief, any person in public office ever wants to have to deal with.”
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers ordered flags in the state to be flown at half-staff until Dec. 22 in honor of the victims.
“It is unthinkable that a kid or an educator might wake up and go to school one morning and never come home,” Evers said in a statement. “This should never happen, and I will never accept this as a foregone reality or stop working to change it.”
In a statement, President Biden called the latest school shooting “shocking and unconscionable” and urged Congress to pass universal background checks for firearm purchases, a national red flag law and a ban on assault weapons.
“From Newtown to Uvalde, Parkland to Madison, to so many other shootings that don’t receive attention — it is unacceptable that we are unable to protect our children from this scourge of gun violence,” Biden said in his statement.
Training day
Barnes noted that police had been conducting a school shooting training exercise 3 miles from Abundant Life Christian School when the 911 call was received. “What began as a training day became an actual day,” Barnes said.
Asked by a reporter how safe parents should feel sending their children to school in the wake of Monday’s shooting, Barnes gave a blunt response: “All I can tell you is that we have systems in place so that if something happens, we can respond like we did today.”
“I think you’re asking me how can I say 100% that no child will ever be harmed in school? I can’t. No police chief can,” Barnes said.
