The father of a Wisconsin teen who carried out a deadly school shooting is now facing felony charges, the latest in a series of prosecutions targeting parents in the aftermath of gun violence, the AP reports. Natalie Rupnow, 15, killed a 14-year-old student as well as a teacher at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison last December before taking her own life. Her father Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, was arrested Thursday and is charged with contributing to the delinquency of a child and two counts of providing a dangerous weapon to a minor resulting in death. Two other students were critically injured in the December shooting.
Authorities have previously said they were investigating how Natalie accessed the two guns used in the incident. "Her father knew that she had them, or at least had access to them," the acting Madison chief of police said at a press conference Thursday, per the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. He said her father bought her at least one of them, and that he had also been informed by police in 2022 of his daughter's "high-risk" online behavior. A clear motive for the attack has not been disclosed; former Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes previously stated that "a combination of factors" influenced the shooting but did not elaborate.
"What we do know is the teenager had a fascination with weapons and school shootings. She often talked about them with people she met online, people from all over the world," the acting chief said Thursday. Rupnow is now one of a small but growing list of parents who have been charged after their children carried out school shootings. Recent cases include the parents of a Michigan school shooter, both convicted of involuntary manslaughter; the father of a Georgia student accused of fatally shooting four people, whose case is still ongoing; and the father of the man charged in suburban Chicago's Fourth of July parade shooting, who pleaded guilty. (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)
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