Wisconsin shooting latest: Natalie Rupnow joined shooting range before school attack as police hunt motive – UK Times

Adam De Wilde was taking out the trash at around 12:30 p.m. Monday when he noticed something unusual.

Some 90 minutes earlier, a student at the Abundant Life Christian School — roughly eight miles away from the tidy 3-bedroom home he and his wife share in Madison, Wisconsin’s Sherman Village section — had fatally gunned down a classmate and a teacher, and wounded six others.

But De Wilde did not yet realize that his neighbor, 15-year-old Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, who would not be identified publicly by police for another several hours, was the person responsible for the unthinkable bloodshed.

“I saw that there were a bunch of cop cars, probably between eight and 12 vehicles, which is not normal for this neighborhood,” De Wilde told The Independent. “… You rarely see a single cop car driving down the street [around here] with its lights on.”

Justin Rohrlich has the exclusive story.

Rupnow was encouraged by her father to practice her weapons-handling skills in the months leading up to Monday’s bloodshed, according to a review of his online activity.

In August, Jeff Rupnow – who was unable to be reached on Tuesday – posted a photograph on Facebook of what appears to be his shotgun -wielding daughter shooting clay pigeons at a local gun club.

“Is that kiddo?” a friend commented.

“Sure is!!!!” Rupnow, the father of one, replied. “We joined NBSC this spring and we have been loving all [sic] every second of it!”

In the photo on her father’s Facebook page, Natalie Rupnow is wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the venerable German electro-industrial band KMFDM.

The top is similar to ones worn by teenage mass shooter Eric Harris, who in 1999, with classmate Dylan Klebold, shot and killed 15 students at Littleton, Colorado’s Columbine High School.

After the Columbine massacre, the members of KMFDM — which stands for Kein Mehrheit für die Mitleid, which translates to “No Pity for the Majority” — condemned the bloodshed, calling themselves “sick and appalled” by what had happened.

Several schools in the Madison Metropolitan School District were targeted by false threats on Tuesday, police said

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes told reporters that police are investigating the “false threats often known as swatting”. Police do not believe there are any current threats to schools in the district.

“Making false threats is a crime, and we are working with the district attorney,” he added.

Madison Fire Department officials were some of the first people on the scene upon authorities receiving a call of an active shooter at the Abundant Life Christian School on Monday.

Fire Chief Dan Williams helped lead the department’s response efforts on Monday and adopted a program called Active Shooting Incident Management before the attack.

Reflecting on a time before the shooting, before adopting the ASIM program, Williams told News 3 Now on Tuesday: “Jheez, this could happen in Madison. How could we be prepared?”

Madison added that he was proud in “seeing everyone integrated, seeing everyone with a task and assignment, and really performing exceptionally.”

The Abundant Life Christian School has given thanks to the local Madison community following a vigil held on Tuesday evening for those killed and injured during the shooting on the school’s grounds.

“Thank you to everyone in the Madison community who came out to support ALCS at the vigil downtown. We are most grateful for all the support!,” the school said on Wednesday morning on Facebook.

“Likewise, we were overwhelmed by the showing of support tonight at City Church’s Mourning Prayer Service. It is humbling to feel so much love and support.”

Natalie Rupnow, the 15-year-old, who died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound on Monday morning, is one of the few female perpetrators of school shootings in recent decades after a teacher and student were gunned down in the attack on the Madison school.

Gunmen commit the overwhelming majority of such attacks and, including the Madison shooting, just nine female students have carried out a school shooting since 1999, according to a Washington Post database.

Data from advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety finds that women constitute less than five percent of assailants across 544 school shooting incidents over the past 11 years.

Of the 197 shooting incidents in the Violence Prevention Project database of mass shootings since 1966, 192 of the shooters were male, four were female, and one was transgender. White men made up the majority of perpetrators, according to the database.

Investigators are working alongside the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to track down the origin of the weapon believed to have been used by school shooter, Natalie Rupnow.

Police have said the 15-year-old shooter used a handgun to carry out the attack. Its history is now being traced by the ATF, Madison Police Department Chief Shon Barnes told CNN on Tuesday.

It is not yet clear who the gun belonged to or where it originated.

“We have asked our partners with the ATF to expedite what’s called an ATF trace form to try and determine the origin of that weapon, who purchased it and how it got from a manufacturer all the way to the hands of a 15-year-old girl,” he said.

“These are questions that are going to take some time to answer.”

The 15-year-old Abundant Life Christian School shooter had a “turbulent home life,” according to court documents seen by the Washington Post.

Natalie Rupnow’s parents, Melissa and Jeff Rupnow, reportedly divorced and remarried multiple times. Their daughter enrolled in therapy to guide her through their custody arrangements, according to the newspaper.

The Post reported that the documents point “to an unsettled childhood for Rupnow, whose parents’ custody agreements sometimes forced her to move between their homes every two or three days.”

They reportedly divorced for the first time in 2014 and agreed to joint legal custody of their daughter. It was agreed that she would primarily live with her mother. They remarried in 2017 and divorced for a second time in 2020. They were to divide custody of Natalie evenly, the court records reportedly show.

After they split up for the second time, they briefly remarried again. By April 2021, they were petitioning for a third divorce, The Post reports.

A seventh-grader from Abundant Life Christian School described the slain teacher as a “kind and caring” person.

Angel Brube, who was inside the Madison, Wisconsin, school at the time of the shooting, reflecting on Monday’s horror attack.

“It was very unexpected and also very scary,” Brube told CNN. “We were just chilling in class and it just came.”

The schoolchild said he knew one of the two victims, a teacher, who died in the shooting.

“The teacher, yes I did know her. And she was a really good person,” Brube said. He added that he had been taught by her “many times before”.

“She was always very kind and caring and she was always very friendly and communicative,” he added.

When Natalie Rupnow began pulling the trigger of her handgun, Brube said the first gunshots he heard sounded like really loud footsteps or banging.

He said police came into the school carrying “long rifles”.