What to know about charges against Jeffery Rupnow, father of Abundant Life school shooter
Teacher Erin West, 42, and freshman Rubi Vergara, 14 were killed in the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School.
Six other people were injured, including one teacher.
The shooter, Natalie "Samantha" Rupnow, died by suicide after opening fire inside a study hall filled with students from different grades, according to court documents. No officers fired their weapons.
Jeffrey Rupnow, the father of the Abundant Life shooter, was arrested by Madison police on May 8. The 42-year-old man was charged with two felony counts of intent to sell a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 and one felony count of contributing to the delinquency of a child.
'Her father knew that she had them, or at least had access to them,' said acting Madison Chief of Police John Patterson at a May 8 news conference.
Rupnow was arrested May 8, during a traffic stop in the early hours of the morning.
More: The Abundant Life shooting shattered Madison's safety. Here's how the community can support each other.
Wisconsin law allows for a felony charge against a parent in situations where they provide a gun or other dangerous weapon to someone under 18, legal experts previously told the Journal Sentinel.
Wisconsin statute says that Rupnow's charge, possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18, applies to 'any person who intentionally sells, loans or gives a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 years of age is guilty of a Class I felony." If the shooting results in death, the penalty is a class H felony.
The criminal complaint against the father detailed that police had been aware of "high-risk" online behavior from the man's daughter and notified him of in June 2022.
At a news conference May 8, Patterson declined to answer questions about whether police or her father knew about her fascination with guns at that point.
In a manifesto found in Natalie Rupnow's room during the police investigation, she said she acquired the guns she took to Abundant Life Christian School as a result of "lies and manipulation, and my fathers stupidity" [sic].
Notebooks, dioramas and camcorder footage Madison detectives found in Natalie Rupnow's bedroom offer snapshots into the teenager's point of view. According to the criminal complaint, Natalie Rupnow left behind a manifesto titled "War Against Humanity," with a subtitle reading, "The creation of a disaster and why is it so unfair?"
These documents are the first to show Natalie Rupnow's mental state in the weeks leading up to the deadly shooting at her high school. The criminal complaint also offers a lens into the ways adults around Natalie Rupnow responded to her mental health struggles.
Four years ago, Jeffrey Rupnow told a detective in a Jan. 29 interview, Natalie Rupnow exhibited signs of suicidal ideation as a student at Black Hawk Middle School. The principal identified Natalie Rupnow using self-harm language and, soon after, was seen at an emergency department, where it was determined there was no immediate threat of self-harm.
She would go on to see a therapist 46 times between Oct. 21, 2021, and June 14, 2024. Despite her history of cutting, so severe that Jeffrey Rupnow told detectives he locked up every knife in the house as a precaution, he bought his daughter her first handgun as a Christmas present in 2023. By the time of the Abundant Life shooting, he had gifted her two guns. A third gun was wrapped under his bed for Christmas.
According to therapy records, Natalie Rupnow started going to therapy for anxiety, depression, anger and self-harm. When the therapist asked Jeffrey Rupnow if his daughter ever expressed suicidal thoughts, he said "(Natalie) talks about it, I don't take it to seriously [sic]. I think she's really just looking for attention when she talks like that."
In the days after the Abundant Life shooting, attention turned to Rupnow's online activity and what it might tell about her motivations. That activity revealed the girl had connections to three other people in the country who either plotted or committed shootings.
In April, Florida authorities arrested Damien Allen, 22, for planning a mass shooting. The two appeared to be in an online relationship and told each other they loved one another, according to court records.
Those records showed the girl say she "wanted to do a Black church' in reference to possible locations. Allen told her he had several places in mind, including a police department, records said.
In Nashville, 17-year-old Solomon Henderson shared similar online networks with her and appeared to admire her, according to a report by Wisconsin Watch. He killed a classmate and then died of a self-inflicted gunshot in a school shooting.
It appears Henderson and Rupnow had only a few direct interactions, Wisconsin Watch reported. Henderson was active on social media in communities that glorified school shootings, according to the USA TODAY Network.
Since the Columbine shooting, a toxic subculture glorifying mass shooters has formed in online spaces. Much of the internal culture and shared language overlaps with white supremacist and other ideologies. The views in these spaces tend to be incoherent and not necessarily a clear political ideology.
Twenty-year-old Alexander Paffendorf, a California man, was also arrested on suspicions of "plotting" to coordinate a mass shooting at a government building in conjunction with her actions, those court records showed. He hoped to pursue a romantic relationship with her, CBS 8 reported.
After the December shooting, the Madison community was left with more questions than answers as police searched for the motive behind Natalie Rupnow's action.
In the days following the shooting, the community held community mourning events, during which leaders asked for more action from lawmakers to prevent future actions.
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway highlighted May 8 during a news conference that there still had been no meaningful action by state or federal lawmakers to prevent future school shootings.
'What happened at Abundant Life Christian school should have been impossible,' she said. 'Instead, we live in a world where preventing a similar tragedy is what feels impossible, and that is not okay. We need to make it impossible for kids to have access to deadly weapons.'
Laura Schulte can be reached at leschulte@jrn.com and on X @SchulteLaura.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What to know about charges against dad of Abundant Life school shooter
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She killed teacher Erin Michelle West and 14-year-old old student Rubi Bergara and wounded six others before she shot herself in the head. Investigators recovered a 9 mm Glock handgun from the room where Natalie Rupnow died as well as a .22-caliber Sig Sauer pistol from a bag the girl was carrying. Also in the bag were three magazines loaded with .22 ammunition and a 50-round box of 9 mm ammunition. Prosecutors charged Jeffery Rupnow this past May, alleging in a criminal complaint that he told investigators his daughter was struggling to cope with her parents' divorce and he bought her the guns as way to connect with her. He also told investigators that he kept the guns in a safe but told her the code to unlock it, according to the complaint. The day before the school attack, the complaint says he took the Sig Sauer out of the safe so she could clean it, but he wasn't sure if he put the weapon back in the safe or locked it. Shooter declared a 'War Against Humanity' A search of Natalie's room netted a six-page document the girl had written entitled 'War Against Humanity,' the complaint said. She started the piece by describing humanity as 'filth' and saying she hated people who don't care and 'smoke their lungs out with weed or drink as much as they can like my own father.' She wrote about how she admired school shooters, how her mother was not in her life and how she obtained her weapons 'by lies and manipulation, and my fathers stupidity.' Rupnow looked on in silence Thursday as his attorney, Lisa Goldman, argued that he acted like a reasonable parent. He kept all their guns in a safe, which isn't required under Wisconsin law. Many Wisconsin parents teach their children how to shoot and Natalie passed a gun safety course, Goldman added. Even though he told investigators that Natalie was struggling over the divorce, he had no reason to think giving her guns would cause more problems, Goldman said. He didn't know how to access her social media accounts, Natalie rarely let him into her room and her therapy records from 2021 to the spring of 2024 showed no indication of suicidal thoughts, Goldman added. Rupnow told Natalie that the gun safe code was his Social Security number in reverse but never gave her the actual number, Goldman continued. She questioned whether Natalie's mother may have given her the number, pointing out that police never checked her mother's electronic devices. Goldman also argued that the school attack took place outside of Rupnow's parental supervision — he was at his job as a recycling truck driver when Natalie opened fire — and he would have had to hand Natalie the guns at Abundant Life to be criminally liable. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne countered that Goldman should make her arguments at trial, not during a preliminary hearing. Rome said in his order sending Rupnow to trial that giving his daughter guns could amount to giving her the pass code and giving her the Sig Sauer the night before the attack. Parents charged in school shootings across the country Rupnow is another in a line of parents to face charges in connection with a school shooting. Last year, the mother and father of a school shooter in Michigan who killed four students in 2021 were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter . The mother was the first parent in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack. The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school was arrested in September and faces charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for letting his son possess a weapon. In 2023, the father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors related to how his son obtained a gun license. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
