Father of 15-year-old who killed 2 at Wisconsin religious school faces felony charges
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The father of a Wisconsin teenage girl who killed a teacher and fellow student in a school shooting was charged with felonies Thursday in connection with the case, police said.

The shooting occurred at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison last December.

Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, of Madison, was taken into custody around 3:45 a.m. Thursday, police said.

Rupnow was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a child and two counts of providing a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 resulting in death. All three charges are felonies, punishable by up to six years in prison each. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance in court on Friday.

Rupnow’s daughter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, opened fire on Dec. 16, 2024, at Abundant Life Christian School, killing a teacher and a 14-year-old student before killing herself. Two other students were critically injured.

Jeffrey Rupnow did not immediately respond to a message The Associated Press left on his Facebook page. No one immediately returned voicemails left at possible telephone listings for him and his ex-wife, Melissa Rupnow. Online court records indicate he represented himself in the couple’s 2022 divorce and do not list an attorney for him in that case.

According to a criminal complaint, Rupnow told investigators that his daughter was traumatized by her parents’ divorce and got into shooting guns after he took her shooting on a friend’s land. He said he bought her two handguns and told her the access code to his gun safe was his Social Security number entered backward.

Investigators discovered writings in her room in which she describes humanity as “filth,” hated people, got her weapons through her father’s “stupidity” and wanted to kill herself in front of everyone. She built a cardboard model of the school and developed a schedule for her attack that ended just after noon with the notation: “ready 4 death.”

Police recovered a 9 mm Glock handgun that her father had bought her from a study hall where she opened fire and another .22-caliber pistol that her father had given to her as a Christmas present in a bag she had been carrying through the school.

Twelve days after the shooting, a Madison police detective received a message from Jeffrey Rupnow saying his biggest mistake was teaching his kid safe gun handling and urging police to warn people to change the codes on their gun safes every two to three months.

“Kids are smart and they will figure it out. Just like someone trying to hack your bank account.’ I just want to protect other families from going through what I’m going through,” he said.

Jeffrey Rupnow is the latest parent of a school shooter to face charges associated with an attack.

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.

Killed in the shooting were Abundant Life teacher Erin Michelle West, 42, and student Rubi Patricia Vergara, 14.

Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school that offers prekindergarten classes through high school. About 420 students attend the institution.

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