‘I’ve grown to hate’: troubling manifesto of Wisconsin teen girl school shooter Natalie Rupnow
Before she started firing at her Wisconsin school, Natalie Rupnow, 15, posted a manifesto in which she spoke of her suicide plans and said she got her weapons by ‘lies and manipulation.’
Seven minutes after Natalie Rupnow, 15, is believed to have shared a six-page “manifesto” on social media, one of her schoolmates dialled 911 as the first shots rang out.
The girl who phoned police could have been no more than eight years old, Shon Barnes, the city’s police chief, told reporters as the US reckoned with another school shooting. “Let that soak in for a minute,” he said.
By the time officers arrived at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, Rupnow, who was known as Samantha by her classmates, had turned the gun on herself. She had killed a teacher and student, and seriously wounded six others.
Although mass shootings are common in the US, only rarely are they perpetrated by women. Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group, found that out of 544 school shooting incidents over an 11-year period, less than 5 per cent of the shooters were female.
David Shapiro, a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and a former FBI special agent, suggested that women were “raised differently and treated differently by society, if not the state too.”
Rupnow had got hold of a 9mm handgun that officers said she fired in a classroom where students from different age groups were studying in the minutes before lunch.
“I just heard shouting and there was a teacher named Mrs Slater, and she was like ‘My leg, help, help’, ” one girl, Nora, told WiscNews, a local news site.
The school’s 390 students, aged between four and 18, hid under tables after a warning went out over the intercom. One teacher is said to have armed himself with a pair of scissors and stood between the door and his students. Nora said that one of her classmates came out from his hiding spot under a desk to close a curtain so Rupnow would not know they were there. “He risked his life to put the curtain down,” she said.
Karl Gottschalk, Nora’s father, said he was in shock after getting text messages from the school warning of an active shooter. “It’s going to take a lot of time and just a lot of consoling for everybody in the community.”
Adler Jean-Charles, another student, was in an English lesson. “Some people started crying,” he told CNN. “I was scared and [thinking], ‘Why did they do that? Why?’” His mother, Mireille Jean-Charles, said: “Thank God they were safe. But the trauma. It’s a lot, as I’m sure they lost friends and teachers, which is not OK. I don’t think they will be OK for a long time, and I’m not.”
The document believed to have been posted by Rupnow online paints a vivid picture of a troubled teenager. “I’ve grown to hate people, and society, it’s truly not my fault though, it never was,” it said. “But all you and the world have done to me … tease me, you’ve pushed me into a corner with no help whatsoever.”
The manifesto poured scorn on her parents, particularly her father. “My parents are scum, there is nothing that will save them to make me think good of them ever again,” it said. “Nobody knows I’m doing this, I got the weapons by lies and manipulation, and my father’s stupidity. I planned on shooting myself a while ago but thought maybe it’s better for evolution rather than just one stupid boring suicide. I’ve planned this myself and nobody else. I act alone.”
Barnes said he was aware of the document, which was reported to have been shared by Rupnow’s boyfriend, whom she had met online. It has been sent to the FBI.
A deleted account on the social media site Tumblr has been linked to Rupnow. It posted a video of Adam Lanza, who shot dead 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, playing a video game. The same account posted a photo appearing to show the account’s owner receiving a handgun for their birthday.
On Monday night police searched a property in northern Madison believed to have been Rupnow’s home. Barnes said Rupnow’s parents were co-operating and that he did not believe that Rupnow had been in trouble with the law before Monday.
“This has been a rough day for our city,” he added. “This is going to be a day that will be etched in the collective minds and memories of all those from Madison.”
The Times
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