Madison, Wisconsin – Wisconsin’s prosecutors accused the father of a teenager who killed a teacher and colleague in a shooting at school last year to allow her access to the semi -automatic pistols she used in the attack.
The 42 -year -old criminal complaint against Jeffrey Rupnow from Madison details her daughter, 15 -year -old Natalie Rupnow, fought with her parents’ divorce, showing her anger in a written piece entitled “War against Humanity.” Her father tried to relate to her through weapons, she said the complaint, even when she meticulously planned the attack, including building a school cardboard model and scheduling the shooting to end her suicide.
Prosecutors filed the complaint on Wednesday, but did not awaken it until Jeffrey Rupnow was arrested on Thursday and taken to Dane County jail. He faces two accusations of giving a dangerous weapon intentionally to a person under 18, causing death and contributing to the delinquency of a child. All accusations are crimes.
He was scheduled to make his initial appearance in court on Friday. On -line judicial records did not list a lawyer to him. Madison police chief John Patterson said he was a cooperative throughout the investigation. No one has returned remaining voice post office in possible telephone listings for him and his ex-wife, Melissa Rupnow.
Attack left 2 dead, 6 injured
Natalie Rupnow entered the abundant Life Christian School, a Madison religious school that offers pre -gardener in high school classes on December 16 and opened fire in a study room. She killed Professor Erin Michelle West and 14 -year -old student Ruby Bergara and injured six others before killing herself.
According to the complaint, the investigators recovered 20 carcasses from the study room, where it opened fire.
They also recovered a 9 mm Glock Pistol that Jeffrey Rupnow had bought her from the living room and a 22 -caliber Sig Sauer pistol from a bag that the girl was carrying, says the complaint. Jeffrey Rupnow gave her a gun as a Christmas gift in 2023, says the complaint.
Also on the bag were three magazines charged with 0.22 ammunition and a box of 50 rounds of 9 mm ammunition. She wore a black t -shirt printed with a target during the attack.
Natalie Rupnow was fighting the divorce of her parents
Jeffrey Rupnow told investigators that her daughter lived with him, but was fighting her mother’s divorce in 2022, saying she hated her life and wanted to kill herself. He said she used to cut herself to the point where he had to lock all the knives in his home.
She was on therapy to learn to be more social until spring before the attack, he told investigators. Her mother, Melissa Rupnow, told detectives that the therapist told her that Natalie was suffering a posttraumatic stress disorder due to divorce. One of Natalie’s friends told investigators that Jeffrey Rupnow was “often verbally aggressive” with Natalie and that she had told her that her father was a “drinker,” according to the complaint.
Jefferry Rupnow told investigators that they took Natalie shooting with him in the land of a friend about two years before the abundant life attack. She liked it, and he came to see weapons as a way to connect with her. But he was shocked by how her interest in firearms “hit the snow,” he told investigators.
He kept Natalie’s pistols on a gun safe, telling her that if she needs them, the access code was her social security number behind. About 10 days before the school attack, he sent a friend a message and said Natalie would kill him if he left “the fun vault now”, according to the complaint.
The day before the school attack, he took Sig Sauer out of the safe so that Natalie could clean it. But he was distracted and was not sure if he put his gun back in the safe or locked it, according to the complaint.
‘War against humanity’
A search of the Natalie room marked a six -page document that the girl had written entitled “War against Humanity.” She began the play describing humanity as “dirt” and saying that she hated people who don’t care and “smoke their lungs with marijuana or drink as much as they may like my own father.”
She wrote about how she admired school shooters, how her mother was not in her life, and how she got her weapons “for lies and manipulation, and my parents’ stupidity.”
The investigators also discovered school maps and a cardboard model of the building, along with a handwritten program that detailed how it would be the attack at 11:30 and ends the first and second floor of the school at 11:55, she planned to finish the attack at 12:10 with a “Ready 4 Death” note.
She was communicating on -line with people around the world about her fascination with shootings and school weapons, said Madison police chief John Patterson, said on Thursday.
Father calls to teach the safety of his ‘error’ weapons security
Jeffery Rupnow sent a message to a detective two weeks after the school shootout, saying his biggest mistake was to teach Natalie how to deal with weapons safely and urge the police to alert people to change their safe arms combinations every two to three months, the complaint said.
“Children are smart and will find out,” he wrote. “Just like someone trying to break into their bank account. I just want to protect other families from going through what I’m going through.”
According to the complaint, after knowing that Natalie was the shooter while talking to a policeman, Melissa Rupnow began to breathe very quickly by the nose and shouted something, with the effect of “I will kill him, I will kill him”, apparently referring to his ex-husband.
The accusations are more recent in sequence of cases against parents in shooting at school
Jeffrey Rupnow is the latest father of a school shooter to face accusations associated with an attack.
Last year, the mother and father of a school shooter in Michigan who killed four students in 2021 were convicted of involuntary murder. The mother was the first mother in the US to be held responsible for a child who performs a mass school attack.
The father of a 14 -year -old boy accused of fatally shooting in four people at a Georgia high school was arrested in September and faces accusations, including high school murder and involuntary murder for letting his son have a gun.
In 2023, the father of a man accused in a deadly July parade in the Chicago suburb declared himself to blame for seven crimes related to the way his son obtained a gun license.