Wisconsin prosecutors have charged the daddy of a teenage woman who killed a trainer and fellow pupil in a faculty capturing final 12 months with permitting her entry to the semiautomatic pistols she used within the assault.
The legal grievance towards 42-year-old Jeffrey Rupnow of Madison particulars how his daughter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, struggled together with her mother and father’ divorce, displaying her anger in a written piece entitled “Warfare In opposition to Humanity.”
Her father tried to bond together with her by means of weapons, the grievance mentioned, at the same time as she meticulously deliberate the assault, together with constructing a cardboard mannequin of the college and scheduling the capturing to finish together with her suicide.
Prosecutors filed the grievance Wednesday however didn’t unseal it till after Jeffrey Rupnow was arrested Thursday and brought to the Dane County Jail.
He faces two counts of deliberately giving a harmful weapon to an individual underneath 18, inflicting dying, and contributing to the delinquency of a kid. All the expenses are felonies.
He was scheduled to make his preliminary court docket look Friday. On-line court docket information didn’t checklist an lawyer for him. Appearing Madison Police Chief John Patterson mentioned he was cooperative all through the investigation.
Nobody returned voicemails left at attainable phone listings for him and his ex-wife, Melissa Rupnow.
Assault left 2 useless, 6 injured
Natalie Rupnow entered Considerable Life Christian Faculty, a spiritual faculty in Madison that provides prekindergarten by means of highschool lessons, on Dec. 16 and opened hearth in a research corridor.
She killed trainer Erin Michelle West and 14-year-old pupil Rubi Bergara and injured six others earlier than she killed herself.
In line with the grievance, investigators recovered 20 shell casings from the research corridor the place she opened hearth.
Additionally they recovered a 9 mm Glock handgun that Jeffrey Rupnow had bought for her from the room and a .22-caliber Sig Sauer pistol from a bag the woman was carrying, the grievance says. Jeffrey Rupnow had provided that gun to her as a Christmas current in 2023, the grievance says.
Additionally within the bag had been three magazines loaded with .22 ammunition and a 50-round field of 9 mm ammunition. She wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with a bull’s-eye throughout the assault.
Natalie Rupnow had been battling mother and father’ divorce
Jeffrey Rupnow advised investigators that his daughter lived with him however had been struggling along with his divorce from her mom in 2022, saying she hated her life and wished to kill herself. He mentioned she used to chop herself to the purpose the place he needed to lock up all of the knives in his home.
She had been in remedy to learn to be extra social till the spring earlier than the assault, he advised investigators.
Her mom, Melissa Rupnow, advised detectives that the therapist advised her that Natalie was struggling post-traumatic stress dysfunction stemming from the divorce.
Certainly one of Natalie’s mates advised investigators that Jeffrey Rupnow was “continuously verbally aggressive” with Natalie and that she had advised him that her father was a “drinker,” in response to the grievance.
Jeffery Rupnow advised investigators that took Natalie capturing with him on a buddy’s land about two years earlier than the Considerable Life assault. She loved it, and he got here to see weapons as a technique to join together with her. However he was shocked at how her curiosity in firearms “snow balled,” he advised investigators.
He saved Natalie’s pistols in a gun protected, telling her that if she ever want them the entry code was his Social Safety quantity entered backward.
About 10 days earlier than the college assault, he texted a buddy and mentioned that Natalie would shoot him if he left “the enjoyable protected open proper now,” in response to the grievance.
The day earlier than the college assault he took the Sig Sauer out of the protected so Natalie might clear it. However he acquired distracted and wasn’t positive if he put the weapon again within the protected or locked it, in response to the grievance.
‘Warfare In opposition to Humanity’
A search of Natalie’s room netted a six-page doc the woman had written entitled “Warfare In opposition to Humanity.” She began the piece by describing humanity as “filth” and saying she hated individuals who don’t care and “smoke their lungs out with weed or drink as a lot as they will like my very own father.”
She wrote about how she admired faculty shooters, how her mom was not in her life and the way she obtained her weapons “by lies and manipulation, and my fathers stupidity.”
Investigators additionally found maps of the college and a cardboard mannequin of the constructing, together with a handwritten schedule that detailed how she would being the assault at 11:30 a.m. and wipe out the primary and second flooring of the college by 11:55 a.m.
She deliberate to finish the assault by 12:10 p.m. with a notation “prepared 4 Dying.”
She had been speaking on-line with individuals all over the world about her fascination with faculty shootings and weapons, Appearing Madison Police Chief John Patterson mentioned Thursday.
Father calls educating her gun security ‘greatest mistake’
Jeffery Rupnow despatched a message to a detective two weeks after the college capturing saying that his greatest mistake was educating Natalie the best way to deal with weapons safely and urging police to warn individuals to alter their gun protected combos each two to 3 months, the grievance mentioned.
“Youngsters are sensible and they’re going to determine it out,” he wrote. “Identical to somebody making an attempt to hack your checking account. I simply wish to shield different households from going by means of what I’m going by means of.”
In line with the grievance, after studying that Natalie was the shooter whereas speaking to a police officer, Melissa Rupnow started respiration in a short time by means of her nostril and yelled one thing, to the impact of, “I’m going to kill him, I’m going to kill him,” apparently referring to her ex-husband.
Expenses are newest in string of instances towards mother and father at school shootings
Jeffrey Rupnow is the newest dad or mum of a college shooter to face expenses related to an assault.
Final 12 months, the mom and father of a college shooter in Michigan who killed 4 college students in 2021 had been every convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
The mom was the primary dad or mum within the US to be held accountable for a kid finishing up a mass faculty assault.
The daddy of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally capturing 4 individuals at a Georgia highschool was arrested in September and faces expenses together with second-degree homicide and involuntary manslaughter for letting his son possess a weapon.
In 2023, the daddy of a person charged in a lethal Fourth of July parade capturing in suburban Chicago pleaded responsible to seven misdemeanors associated to how his son obtained a gun license.
