Abundant Life Christian School shooting

On December 16, 2024, a school shooting occurred at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Two people were killed and six others were injured. The perpetrator, 15-year-old Natalie Lynn Rupnow, committed suicide at the scene. The shooting has inspired copycat attacks.

Background

Abundant Life Christian School is a private Christian K–12 school founded in 1978. The building is located next to the City Church Madison and shares a 28-acre (11 ha) campus with the Campus for Kids Learning Center, an infant to kindergarten center in addition to the church. Children from about 200 families are enrolled in the school, which had about 390 students enrolled at the time of the shooting. At the time of the shooting, the school had cameras installed; however, like most private schools of its size, it did not have a metal detector or a school resource officer.

Shooting

The shooting occurred inside of a classroom used as a study hall. The Madison Police Department received a 911 call from a second-grade teacher inside the school at 10:57 a.m. CST. The shooting was in a mixed age and grade study hall. Rupnow was armed with two handguns during the shooting, but only used one of them.

Law enforcement arrived at the school and found the shooter dead at 11:05 a.m., from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The suspect was initially reported as a teenage juvenile and a student at the school. The shooter was declared dead while being transported to the hospital.

At 11:14 a.m. school staff and students were evacuated. None of the responding officers fired their weapons. After an initial sweep of the school, police officials reported that there was no further threat to the public. A public safety alert was sent to nearby phones at around 11:20 a.m.

21 shell casings were recovered at the school. Rupnow carried two pistols (a 9mm Glock 19 Gen4 and .22 caliber Sig Sauer P322), five 9mm magazines, three .22-caliber magazines, and a box containing 50 rounds of 9mm ammunition. She wore a black T-shirt inscribed with a bullseye.

Victims

During an initial news conference, officials from the Madison Police Department reported that the death toll was five people, but later amended their report and said that three people, including the suspected shooter, were dead. The two victims were identified by the Dane County Medical Examiner's Office as 42-year-old teacher Erin West of DeForest and 14-year-old student Rubi Vergara.

Six people were injured, two critically. Chief of Police Shon F. Barnes did not provide the ages and genders of the injured victims. Four patients from the shooting were treated at SSM Health St. Mary's Hospital in Madison, according to a spokesperson for the hospital. Two of the injured victims were later discharged. The other two patients remained hospitalized but were in stable condition.

Perpetrator

Natalie Lynn "Samantha" Rupnow (November 7, 2009 – December 16, 2024), a 15-year-old female student at the school, was identified by a law enforcement official as the perpetrator. Rupnow lived in the Madison metropolitan area for the entirety of her life, with family ties in both Friesland and Randolph, Wisconsin. Her parents were both divorced and re-married twice. She had been enrolled in therapy by July 2022, which was supposed to help guide decisions about which parent with whom she would spend weekends. Before this therapy, Rupnow had threatened to kill herself and had engaged in self-cutting until her father "had to lock up all the knives in his house." One of her friends told police that Rupnow had referred to her father as a "drinker" and that he frequently verbally abused his daughter.

In June of 2022, when Rupnow was 12, she began contact with a 22-year-old man from Illinois, who claimed he was 17. Following multiple lewd messages from the man, he arranged to meet Rupnow, which he did on at least one occasion. This man's relationship with Rupnow was eventually discovered, and police charged him with child enticement.

Months prior to the shooting in August, Rupnow joined a gun club when her father took her to a shooting range. He wrote in a Facebook comment that they had joined the club that spring and had been "loving every second of it". Rupnow's father told police that her interest in firearms had "snowballed" and that he had informed her of the combination to his gun safe where he kept her firearms. Ten days prior to the shooting, he texted a friend, saying that his daughter would shoot him if he opened the gun safe.

A user posted on X what was alleged to be the shooter's manifesto. At the time of publication, the manifesto had not yet been authenticated by Madison police. In a document entitled "War Against Humanity" that investigators discovered at Rupnow's house, she described humanity as "filth" and wrote about how she admired school shooters. She also discussed her mother's absence and how she had obtained firearms by "lies and manipulation, and my fathers [sic] stupidity". Rupnow's alleged social media accounts contained expressions of alienation.

On Telegram, she had been invited to a group chat in which the perpetrator of the 2024 Eskişehir mosque stabbing had posted his manifesto shortly before committing his attack. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Rupnow was found to possibly have a TikTok account with white supremacist memes and a bio that had the phrase "Totally nice day" which is sometimes used as a racist dog whistle by white supremacists as a code for "TND", and stands for "Total Nigger Death". A photo emerged of her wearing a KMFDM t-shirt similar to the shirt that Eric Harris, one of the perpetrators of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, wore in various amateur videos.

Aftermath

The Boys and Girls Clubs of Dane County hosted a candlelight vigil the day after the shooting at the state capitol grounds. A memorial was set up on a sidewalk near the school to honor the victims of the shooting. Former students among others brought offerings such as poinsettia flowers to the memorial. On December 18, an obituary for Vergara was published online by a local funeral home. Her funeral service was held on December 21 at City Church in Madison. On August 1, 2025, Rupnow's mother, Mellissa Rupnow, was found dead from an apparent suicide.

Investigation

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) was at the scene following the shooting. A spokesperson said the Bureau recovered the 9mm caliber handgun used in the shooting and was running a trace on it. Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spoke to the perpetrator's family and students to attempt to find a motive. The perpetrator's family cooperated with law enforcement throughout the investigation.

Chief Barnes said he was aware that the alleged manifesto, claimed to be from the shooter, was circulating on the internet, but he could not confirm its authenticity. He also said that he has requested that the ATF expedite their investigation into the shooter's whereabouts and method of obtaining the firearm. He was unsure if her parents owned or had possession of the weapon. On December 17, Barnes told news reporters that investigators are looking into a "combination of factors," including the possibility that Rupnow had been bullied.

The shooter's father's home was searched by law enforcement on December 17, in order to gather computers and other personal devices that will be used to identify the shooter's digital footprint. The shooter's mother's home was also visited by police on December 17, but according to neighbors and eyewitnesses, it appeared nobody was home. Neighbors said they had little contact with the shooter's mother. Police searched the suspected shooter's social media accounts for hints that could help them establish a motive behind the attack.

While searching Rupnow's home, officers found a cardboard model of the school, maps, and a schedule of the attack, beginning with her opening fire at 11:30 a.m., "wiping out" the first and second floors of the school, and then ending the attack at 12:10 p.m. with the note "ready 4 Death."

On May 8, 2025, Rupnow's father, Jeffrey Rupnow, was charged with two counts of intentionally giving, selling, or loaning a dangerous weapon to a person under the age of 18 and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, in connection to how Rupnow obtained the weapons used in the shooting. All three charges were felonies. Bond was set at $20,000 on May 9.

Potential conspirators and copycats

On December 18, 20-year-old Alexander Paffendorf from Carlsbad, California, was detained by FBI agents in connection with the shooting. He was suspected of coordinating a mass shooting at a government building in conjunction with Rupnow. Allegedly, he told Rupnow that he "would arm himself with explosives and a gun and that he would start shooting in a government building." It is currently unclear how Paffendorf and Rupnow knew each other; the FBI declined to comment on this situation.