A 15-year-old girl opened fire inside a classroom at Abundant Life Christian School in Wisconsin, United States on Monday, killing a fellow student and a teacher before taking her own life, police said.
The incident happened shortly before 11 a.m. during a mixed-grade study hall. Six other people, including three students and a teacher, were wounded. Two of the injured students remain in critical condition with life-threatening injuries, while the others are expected to survive.
The shooter was identified by police as Natalie Rupnow, who also went by the name Samantha.
At a press conference, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes revealed that a second-grade student, around 7 or 8 years old, made the 911 call to report the shooting.
The victims who died were a teenage student and a teacher, but their names have not yet been released.
The school, which has about 420 students ranging from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade, was quickly placed on lockdown as police arrived.
Authorities are still investigating the motive behind the attack, and it remains unclear how the teenager obtained the handgun.
“Good question. How does any 15-year-old get ahold of a gun?”* Barnes asked when questioned about the weapon.
Chief Barnes confirmed that the shooter’s parents are cooperating with the investigation. He stated that investigators are speaking with her father but are being sensitive, given the family’s loss.
“We have no reason to believe that they have committed a crime at this time,” Barnes added.
School shootings have become a grim pattern in the United States. According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, there have been 322 school shootings this year, the second-highest total since 1966.
However, Monday’s shooting is rare because female shooters account for only about 3% of mass shootings in the U.S., studies show.
This tragedy comes just 12 years and two days after the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut.
In 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the first major federal gun reform law in three decades following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were killed.
