The 15-year-old girl who police say killed a teacher and a student and wounded six others before dying by suicide at a school in Madison, Wisconsin, reportedly left a manifesto that investigators are now reviewing.
Police identified Natalie Rupnow – who also went by the name Samantha – as the shooter late on Monday. A law enforcement source told CNN that Rupnow “had been dealing with problems and expressed some of those in writings, which they are now reviewing”.
Rupnow was a pupil at Abundant Life, a private Christian school. Her motive remains unclear. A manifesto, which is not confirmed as genuine by authorities, was published on social media.
“A document about this shooting is circulating at this time on social media, but we have not verified its authenticity,” the Madison police chief, Shon Barnes, said at a news conference.
Barnes said police were still working to identify a reason for the shooting. “At this time, we’re still working on a motive, trying to determine why this happened,” he remarked.
Police said Rupnow’s family members were cooperating with their investigation into the killings at Abundant Life, which occurred at about 11am local time on Monday.
Barnes said the first 911 call to report an active shooter came in shortly before 11am from a second-grade teacher – not a second-grade student as he initially reported publicly.
Barnes said a handgun was recovered at the scene – but that the police had not yet tracked the weapon’s origin. “How does any 15-year-old get hold of a gun?” he said.
Police said the shooting took place in a classroom during a study hall session.
Two of the six injured victims remained in critical condition, while others were in stable condition or have been discharged from the hospital.
Barnes made remarks on Tuesday at a news conference, but left without taking questions from reporters, leaving the Madison mayor and Dane county executive to face the media. They declined to disclose the names of the victims.
“Leave them alone,” Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway snapped.
The school had security cameras, and the faculty and students had been trained in lockdown procedures. It was not equipped with metal detectors.
The school’s director of elementary and school relations, Barbara Wiers, said students understood the unfolding situation was not a drill and had “handled themselves magnificently”.
“When they heard ‘lockdown, lockdown’ and nothing else, they knew it was real, and they handled themselves brilliantly,” Wiers said.
Mackenzie Truitt, 24, placed a red poinsettia plant at the school to honor the victims. She said her brother is a graduate and some of his friends were wounded.
“My heart sank because I know how awesome a lot of these kids are,” Truitt said. “I know how scared everybody was. Couldn’t get a hold of certain people. Just really scary having to deal with that.”
Young women are far less likely than young men to be suspects in school shootings. According to the K-12 school shooting database, as of Tuesday, nine suspects this year were female compared to 249 male suspected shooters.
The database says it tracks all instances when a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time, or day of the week.
The New York Times reported that the school Rupnow attended and where the shooting took place often serves children who have been bullied or struggled at other schools.
Rebekah Smith, whose teenage daughter was in a physics class down the hall from where the shooting took place, told the outlet staff were trained to swiftly put a stop to intra-student cruelty.
Smith said members of the school community believed that the shooter was new to the school this year.
“You feel compassion for the parent who says, ‘Maybe this will help my child,’” Smith told the newspaper. “I can’t even imagine what they’re feeling.”
The police chief was asked about comments online that suggested the shooter may have been transgender.
“I don’t know whether Natalie was transgender or not,” Barnes said.
“I don’t think that whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may have wanted to identify,” he added. “And I wish people would kind of leave their own personal biases out of this.”
The high rate of school shootings in the US has fueled calls from some quarters to enact more substantial federal gun control legislation. But Congress has largely been unable or unwilling to pass such measures.
Carolyn Griese, 70, of Monona, who did not have any affiliation with the school, said she felt moved to drive over Tuesday. She cried as she placed flowers on the sidewalk.
“When I was growing up, we worried about the atomic bomb,” she said. “And now they actually practice active shooter scenarios. And I think how could that be? They’re children. Innocent children.”
Griese’s daughter is an associate principal in a different school. The shooting pulled her thoughts to her own grandkids, and the thought of losing family so close to Christmas.
“It’s terrifying,” she said. “It’s horrible.”
• This article was amended on 17 December 2024 to correct the name the suspected shooter went by.
Associated Press contributed to this report
