Wisconsin school shooter only used 1 of 2 guns on her, police chief says

Wisconsin religious school shooter had two guns on him but only used one the attack that killed a teacher and a student and wounded six others, the city’s police chief told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Police are still investigating why the 15-year-old student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison shot and killed a classmate and teacher Monday before shooting herself, Madison Police Chief Sean Barnes said.

Two other students who were shot remained in critical condition Wednesday.

“We may never know what she was thinking that day, but we will do our best to try to add or give as much information as we can to our audience,” Barnes said.

The student who was killed was identified in an obituary released Wednesday as Ruby Patricia Vergara, 14, of Madison. She was a freshman and “an avid reader, loved art, sang and played keyboard in the family worship band,” according to the obituary.

The name of the slain teacher has not been released.

Barnes released the name of the shooter, Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, hours after Monday’s shooting.

Barnes said the medical examiner will release the names of those killed, but state law prohibits the release of the names of those injured.

Police, with the help of the FBI, are scouring online records and other resources and talking to the attacker’s parents and classmates in an effort to determine a motive, Barnes said.

Police do not know if anyone was targeted or if the attack was planned in advance, he said.

Although Rupnow had two guns, Barnes said she did not know how she obtained them and declined to say who bought them, citing the ongoing investigation.

No decision has been made on whether Rupnow’s parents could face charges in connection with the shooting, but they have been cooperative, Barnes said.

Online court records show no criminal charges against her father, Jeffrey Rupnow, or her mother, Melissa Rupnow. The two are divorced and share custody of their daughter, but she lives primarily with her father, according to court documents. Divorce records show Natalie was in therapy in 2022, but don’t say why.

Female Sagittarius rarely

The shooting was the latest among dozens across the U.S. in recent years, including particularly deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas.

But the attack in Madison is an outlier because only about three percent of all mass shootings in the U.S. are committed by women, studies show.

School shootings have become an almost daily occurrence in the United States, with 322 this year, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. This is the second highest amount for any year since 1966. so far – surpassing only last year’s 349.

School shootings by teenage girls are extremely rare in the U.S., with males in their teens and 20s committing most of them, said David Ridman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database.

Emily Salisbury, an associate professor of social work at the University of Utah, studies criminology and gender. She said women usually turn their anger on themselves because American culture has taught them that women don’t hurt people, leading to eating disorders, self-harm and depression.

It’s hard to speculate without knowing all the facts in Rupnow’s case, Salisbury said, but a girl who resorted to the level of violence she displayed suggests she’s been through severe trauma or has been abused herself.

“There needs to be more provocation, more incitement for girls and women to become violent,” Salisbury said. “It is very likely that she has experienced some type of abuse in her life that could lead to serious mental illness.”

Abundant Life is a non-denominational Christian school — pre-kindergarten through high school — with approximately 420 students.

Salisbury said the public should not assume the school’s religious teachings mean its students are above bullying and ostracizing one another.

“They are children,” said Salisbury. “As much as these (religious) values ​​are taught or discussed in the classroom in the culture of this school, kids are online all the time. Kids are creating their own culture through social media.”