1 of 3 | Adults and students gather outside a church on the grounds of Abundant Life Christian School following a shooting earlier in the day in Madison, Wis., on Monday. A teenage student and a teacher were killed. The suspected shooter, a 17 year-old female student, was also found dead at the school, according to police. Photo by Jeffery Phelps/EPA-EFE
Dec. 16 (UPI) — A student and a teacher are dead, and several others were injured, after a 15-year-old opened fire at a small private Christian school in southeast Wisconsin on Monday morning.
Police identified the suspected shooter Monday night as 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, a student at the Abundant Life Christian School, where she went by the name Samantha.
Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes told reporters in a press conference that Rupnow died from a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound after opening fire Monday morning inside a study hall classroom containing students from multiple grades at Abundant Life.
Along with the two deaths, five students and a teacher were injured.
Two of the injured students remained in critical condition Monday night, according to Barnes. Of the four others treated for non-life-threatening injuries, two have been released while two remain hospitalized in stable condition.
A motive for the shooting remains unknown, Barnes said.
He said the shooting was reported to police by a second-grade student at 10:57 a.m. CST, with officers arriving at the scene minutes later to find multiple people suffering from gunshot wounds.
Rupnow was pronounced dead during transport to a local hospital, while the unidentified slain teacher and student were pronounced dead at the scene, he said.
A firearm has been recovered, according to authorities.
“I don’t know how we can minimize what has happened today, but we’re going to do the best we can to provide services for all these children and staff — we cannot forget the staff who bravely took care of their students during this harrowing time,” he said.
Abundant Life Christian School said Monday it does not have a resource officer or metal detectors but does have cameras in hallways that are monitored through the main office.
“We also have other safety measures throughout the building. But as to a metal detector, no, we do not have,” Barbara Wiers, the director of elementary and school relations at the K-12 school, said during an earlier press conference.
“We do abide by the policy of visual scans every morning as students come into the building, so every student is visually scanned before they go up to their locker spaces or into their classrooms,” Wiers added. The school had trained with the Madison Police Department earlier this year on how to respond to an active shooter situation.
President Joe Biden issued a statement Monday afternoon, saying, “We need Congress to act. Now,” and called the shooting “shocking and unconscionable.”
“Jill and I are praying for all the victims today, including the teacher and teenage student who were killed and those who sustained injuries,” Biden said. “We can never accept the senseless violence that traumatizes children, their families and tears entire communities apart.”
Biden also called on Congress to pass commonsense gun safety laws.
“Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” the president said, adding that his team had reached out to local officials in Wisconsin to “offer further support as needed.”
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers ordered flags throughout the state to be lowered to half-staff through Sunday, adding in a statement that “there are no words to describe the devastation and heartbreak.”
The FBI was on the scene to aid in the investigation.
The school of some 420 students confirmed in a statement Monday evening that all pupils had been united with their parents. A reunification center had been established near the school in the east end of Madison.
“I can tell you that it’s not over. I can tell you that our officers and our detectives and our investigators will have to be told to go home,” Barnes said Monday night. “No one is thinking of going home right now. They’re going to still work as long as they can to find as much information as the can.”
Asked how Rupnow go her hands on the weapon, Barnes replied: “That’s a good question. How does any 15-year-old get a hold of a gun — or anyone for that matter?”
Rupnow’s family is cooperating with the investigation, he said, adding that her father was speaking with officers Monday night at a police facility “to determine what he may knew or may not have known about what happened today.”
“He lost someone as well,” Barnes said, “so we’re not going to rush the information. We’ll take our time and make sure that we do our due diligence in doing that.”
Wisconsin congressman Rep. Mark Pocan said this is “uniquely a United States problem that doesn’t have to happen” and called for “more action” and “backbone” by elected officials to “stand up to gun manufacturers.”
“Thoughts and prayers without action means more school shootings, more dead kids,” Pocan, D-Wis., who sits on the House Appropriations Committee and is Labor Caucus co-chair, posted on social media before 3 p.m. local time.
Training on responding to shootings was ongoing the same day at a training center three miles away, Barnes said earlier in the day. But the local police department did not fire their weapons, he said.
Barnes earlier Monday said he would not give further information on the victims until families had been alerted.