Wisconsin school shooter Natalie Rupnow’s father shared a chilling image of his daughter practicing at a shooting range in a similar T-shirt to one worn by the Columbine school shooters.
Jeff Rupnow posted the snap to his public Facebook page in August. His daughter is filmed pointing a rifle at a clay puck wearing a black top emblazoned with the name of the band KMFDM.
Columbine killer Eric Harris was seen wearing a KMFDM T-shirt ahead of the 1999 Colorado high school massacre where 13 were murdered
Natalie, 15, killed a substitute teacher and a teenage student and wounded six others with a 9mm pistol.
Neither victim has been named. The double murderer, who also went by the name Samantha, then turned the gun on herself at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison on Monday morning.
No motive has been given and police say they’re working to verify whether a manifesto being shared online was written by Rupnow.
Jeff Rupnow has two daughters and it is unclear which of them was snapped firing the gun – but he spoke proudly of the child’s prowess with a weapon.
Asked by a Facebook commenter if it was his daughter in the image, he replied ‘Joined NBSC (North Bristol Shooting Club) this spring and we have been loving every second of it.
The NBSC – or North Bristol Sportsman’s Club – is a gun club in Sun Prairie, a suburb of Madison, offering annual family memberships for just $90, according to its website.
The club was founded in 1970 and has more than 600 members. The Rupnows’ alleged membership has not yet been confirmed by the club. DailyMail.com has approached the NBSC for comment.
Rupnow was seemingly encouraged to handle and fire guns by her father Jeff Rupnow. Mr Rupnow in August shared a photograph (above) on Facebook of one of his two daughters at a local shootin range
Police confirmed they were talking with Jeff Rupnow (pictured) and other family members, who were cooperating
As scrutiny fell on Jeff Rupnow’s image of the gun range, observers noticed his daughter was wearing a t-shirt of the German industrial rock band KMFDM, who were notably idolized by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre.
The pair shot and killed 12 students and one teacher in the attack. Chilling CCTV footage showed the heavily armed killers walking around the school’s cafeteria during the mass killing.
They injured 21 others while three more were hurt while attempting to escape the school. The pair subsequently killed themselves before they could be caught.
A website belonging to Harris featured lyrics from KMFDM songs and speeches by Adolf Hitler. They were also photographed wearing the band’s shirts. At the time of the shooting, the group released a statement denouncing the shooting and Nazism.
Police, who identified Rupnow as the shooter on Monday, are still investing the motive behind her rampage. Officers raided the family’s home and are sifting through a chilling manifesto that she may have left behind.
It comes amid online speculation over Rupnow’s gender identity and as Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes has sparked fury by claiming that whether or not she is transgender is ‘not important at all’ to the investigation into the massacre.
Barnes also raised the possibility of Rupnow’s parents facing charges, following the imprisonment of James and Jennifer Crumbley earlier this year that opened the door to prosecutions of school shooter parents.
Barnes said at Monday’s press conference: ‘We also want to look at if the parents may have been negligent. And that’s a question that we’ll have to answer with our district attorney’s office.’
It is unclear when the picture was taken, but Mr Rupnow did confirm the photo was of his ‘kiddo’. He added, responding to a comment from a friend, that he and his daughter joined a local gun club in the spring and ‘we have been loving all every second of it!’
Police also raided the family’s home, (pictured) located eight miles away from the small Christian school, Monday night, with SWAT teams deploying stun grenades on the property
Observers noted Rupnow’s daughter appeared to be wearing a t-shirt of the German industrial rock band KMFDM, who were notably idolized by Eric Harris (pictured) and Dylan Klebold, the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre
The Columbine school shooting in 1999 is often seen as a watershed moment in the age of school shootings in America, with many future student killers idolizing the perpetrators
Soon after the mass shooting unfolded, police said they believe the attack had been pre-mediated, and a source told CNN that Rupnow ‘had been dealing with problems and expressed some of those in writings, which they are now reviewing’.
Barnes continued at the press conference: ‘A document about this shooting is circulating at this time on social media, but we have not verified its authenticity.’
Rupnow was present from the start of the school day on Monday and eventually opened fire on a study hall full of students from various grades, Chief Barnes said.
Investigators believe Rupnow used a 9mm pistol to carry out her attack, a law enforcement official told AP. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.
A motive for the shooting was not immediately known, nor was it clear if the victims were targeted, Barnes said during a press conference Monday.
‘I don’t know why, and I feel like if we did know why, we could stop these things from happening,’ he told reporters.
It was not immediately clear to Barnes or investigators which grade Rupnow attended at the school, which serves students from the age of three to the end of high school.
The police chief said that a second-grade student was the one who called 911 to the school. The study hall had members of multiple grades in it at the time.
Rupnow arrived at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison on time Monday and pulled out the handgun about three hours into the school day, officials said. The first 911 call to report an active shooter came in shortly before 11am
Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said that a second-grade student was the one who called 911 to the school
Barnes added that police were talking with the shooter’s father and other family members, who were cooperating, and that teams were searching the shooter’s home.
‘The parents are fully cooperating, we have no reason to believe that they have committed a crime at this time,’ Barnes said, before offering empathy for her father.
‘He lost someone as well. And so we’re not going to rush the information, we’ll take our time and certainly do our due diligence.’
Asked how she got the gun, the police chief said, ‘Good question. How does any 15-year-old get ahold of a gun?’
The police chief added that he had no knowledge of any previous interactions with Rupnow: ‘I think if there were, we certainly would have had some type of intervention, but I’m not aware of that.’
Barnes also slammed online speculation over the shooter’s gender or possible status as a transgender person, claiming it was not relevant to the investigation.
‘I don’t know whether Natalie was transgender or not. And quite frankly, I don’t think that’s important at all,’ he said during a news conference, CNN reported.
‘I wish people would leave their own personal biases we have lost members of our community. It’s something that may come out later but for what we’re doing today it is of no consequence at this time.’
He added: ‘I don’t think whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may want to identify. For what we’re doing right now, today, literally eight hours after a mass shooting in a school in Madison, it is of no consequence at this time [what gender the shooter was].’
In March 2023, transgender Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale opened fire on a private Christian school.
Hale, 28, killed three children and three adults in the March 2023 rampage at The Covenant School. Police said Hale, who was transgender, was believed to have had ‘some resentment for having to go to that school’.
Students on the grounds of Abundant Life Christian School following a shooting on Monday
Police walk outside the Abundant Life Christian School following a shooting
Rupnow arrived at school on time Monday and pulled out the handgun about three hours into the school day, officials said.
The first 911 call to report an active shooter came in shortly before 11am. First responders who were in training just 3 miles away dashed to the school for an actual emergency, Barnes said. They arrived three minutes after the initial call.
Once the shooting began, students were locked in their classrooms and ‘handled themselves magnificently,’ said Barbara Wiers, Abundant Life’s director of elementary and school relations.
Students practice what to do in the event of a shooting, and are normally told, ‘this is just a drill,’ Wiers told the press conference.
‘They were clearly scared … when they heard ‘lockdown, lockdown’ and nothing else they knew it was real,’ Wiers said.
Students were later taken off campus to a site where all the survivors were reunited with their parents, officials said.
Wiers said the school does not have metal detectors but uses other security measures including cameras.
Police investigate as emergency vehicles are parked outside the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin on Monday
Emergency vehicles are parked outside the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin following a shooting, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024
School shootings have been a macabre routine in the US, with 322 of them this year, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database website.
That is the second highest total of any year since 1966, according to that database – topped only by last year’s total of 349 such shootings.
Monday’s rampage was a rarity in that it was carried about by a girl. Only about 3 per cent of all US mass shootings perpetrated by females, studies show.
The gun violence epidemic has afflicted public and private schools alike in urban, suburban and rural communities.
School shootings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to doing active shooter drills in their classrooms. But the rampages have done little to move the needle on national gun laws.
Firearms were the leading cause of death among children in 2020 and 2021, according to KFF, a nonprofit that researches health care issues.
Students aboard a bus as they leave the shelter following a shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024
President Joe Biden called on Congress Monday to pass universal background checks, a national red flag law and certain gun restrictions. Similar calls have gone unheeded after almost every school shooting in recent memory.
‘We can never accept senseless violence that traumatizes children, their families, and tears entire communities apart,’ Biden said.
‘It is unacceptable that we are unable to protect our children from this scourge of gun violence. We cannot continue to accept it as normal.’
Biden also spoke with Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and offered his support.
Evers said it’s ‘unthinkable’ that a child or teacher would go to school and never return home.
Rhodes-Conway said the country needs to do more to prevent gun violence. ‘I hoped that this day would never come to Madison,’ she added.
In 2022, Biden signed into law the first major federal gun reform in three decades, about a month after an 18-year-old man opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 students and two teachers.