The Wisconsin school shooter used only one of two handguns against them, the police chief says

The shooter at a religious school in Wisconsin had two handguns with her but only used one the attack that killed a teacher and a student and six others injured, the city’s police chief told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Police are still investigating why the 15-year-old Abundant Life Christian School student in Madison shot a fellow student and teacher Monday before shooting herself, Madison Police Chief Shon 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 add or give as much information to our public as possible,” Barnes said.

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

The name of the murdered teacher was not released.

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

Barnes said the coroner would release the names of those killed, but state law prohibits releasing the names of those injured.

Police, with assistance from the FBI, combed through online records and other resources and spoke to the attacker’s parents and classmates to determine the motive, Barnes said.

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

While Rupnow had two handguns, Barnes said he didn’t know how she got them and he wouldn’t say who bought them, citing the ongoing investigation.

No decisions have been made yet on whether Rupnow’s parents could be charged in connection with the shooting, but they have cooperated, Barnes said.

Online court records show no criminal charges against her father, Jeffrey Rupnow, or her mother, Mellissa Rupnow. They are divorced and share custody of their daughter, but she lived primarily with her father, according to court documents. Divorce records indicate that Natalie was in therapy in 2022, but it doesn’t say why.

Female shooters are rare

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

But the Madison shooting represents an outlier, as studies show that only about three percent of all mass shootings in the United States are carried out by women.

According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, school shootings in the United States are now almost commonplace, with 322 shootings this year. That’s the second-highest total of any year since 1966 – surpassed only by last year’s 349.

School shootings by teenage females have been extremely rare in the U.S., with most of them committed by men in their teens and 20s, said David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database.

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

It’s difficult to speculate without knowing all the facts in Rupnow’s case, Salisbury said, but a girl’s reference to the level of violence she exhibited suggests she is experiencing severe trauma or suffered violence himself.

“For girls and women to become violent, you need more provocation and more incitement,” Salisbury said. “It is very likely that she has experienced some form of violence in her life that could lead to serious mental illness.”

Abundant Life is a non-denominational Christian school – preschool through high school – with approximately 420 students.

Salisbury said the public should not assume that the school’s religious teachings mean its students do not bully and exclude each other.

“They’re children,” Salisbury said. “As much as these (religious) values ​​are taught or discussed in the classroom in this school’s culture, children are constantly online. Children create their own culture through social media.”