Jeffrey Rupnow received a disturbing visit from the police in the summer of 2022. Officers told the Wisconsin man that his teenage daughter had engaged in behaviors that made them think she might carry out a violent act. A year and a half later, Rupnow gave the girl the Christmas present she had always wanted, a .22 caliber Sig Sauer handgun.
Now, Rupnow faces criminal charges — and as much as 18 years in prison — for allegedly contributing to the kind of violence the police had feared. On Dec. 16, 2024, his daughter, Natalie, took the Sig Sauer and another handgun to Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, where she shot two people to death and wounded six others. The assault ended when Natalie, 15, took her own life.
The charges against Rupnow, 42, reflect a growing movement to hold parents accountable for acts of mass violence carried out by their children. Prosecutors in at least three states have argued that by allowing their children to possess firearms, parents are at least partly to blame for deadly school shootings.
Rupnow pleaded not guilty on May 9 to charges of contributing to the delinquency of a child and two counts of providing a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 resulting in a death. He was released on a $20,000 bond.
Girl wanted ‘her own gun’
By most accounts, Natalie was an exceedingly disturbed child. She went into therapy in middle school for anxiety, depression, anger and self-harm after she began cutting herself, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. At one point, the newspaper reported, Jeffrey Rupnow locked up every knife in the family home.
Natalie was still in therapy when the police shared their concerns about her behavior with Rupnow, according to court records. It is not clear how officers learned of any potential threat the girl posed. Regardless, Rupnow gave Natalie the Sig Sauer .22 for Christmas in 2023 and helped her buy a Glock 9 mm semiautomatic last summer.
He later told detectives she had saved her money and wanted “her own gun,” according to court records cited in news reports. “Obviously, it was my gun, but she saved up and it was her money.”
Wisconsin law prevents anyone younger than 21 from purchasing a handgun.
Jeffrey let his daughter have the guns even though she had threatened to kill herself, the Journal-Sentinel reported. He told detectives he thought she was only trying to get attention.
‘Disturbing’ discoveries after shooting
Rupnow noticed “nothing serious or malicious” about Natalie’s behavior in the first days of December 2024, he would later tell the police.
But on Dec. 5, court records show, he texted a friend, saying, “My kid would shoot me if I left the (gun) safe open right now.”
Natalie went to school late on Dec. 16, then opened fire in a study hall. Two people, 42-year-old teacher Erin West and student Rubi Vergara, 14, were killed. At least two others remained in critical condition as of the week of May 4, the Milwaukee newspaper reported.
When the police searched Natalie’s home after the shooting, they found notebooks and a lengthy document she had titled “War Against Humanity.” She described people as “filth” and said she was living in a “population of scum.” Referring to one group with a racial slur, she wrote, “Some of you guys deserve to be dead.”
“The items recovered (after the shooting) were disturbing,” Madison Police Chief John Patterson said at a news conference during the week of May 4, after Jeffrey Rupnow’s arrest. “They were alarming, and they would have led any average person to the conclusion of violence, to the concern of violence, really.”
Detectives also determined Natalie was in an online relationship with a 22-year-old man who had been arrested in Florida for planning a mass shooting, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. She once told the man she wanted to stage an attack on a Black church.
Parents held responsible
Parents of underage school shooters had never faced criminal liability until prosecutors in Michigan charged James and Jennifer Crumbley with involuntary manslaughter after their 15-year-old son, Ethan, shot four classmates to death at Oxford High School in 2021.
Ethan Crumbley pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence for murder and other offenses. Juries convicted both parents in separate trials in 2024 after hearing testimony that they had left an unsecured gun at home, despite their son’s mental health issues. In sentencing them to at least 10 years in prison, a judge said they had failed to prevent a “runaway train” that ended in tragedy.
A few months after the Crumbleys’ trials ended, authorities charged the father of an alleged school shooter with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct in connection with a shooting that left four people dead and nine injured at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.
Prosecutors say Colin Gray failed to keep his assault-style semiautomatic rifle away from his 14-year-old son, Colt, even after the police had questioned them about an online threat linked to Colt’s internet accounts in 2023.
Colin Gray also bought ammunition, a gun sight and other firearms accessories for his son, according to NPR.
Colt Gray has pleaded not guilty to murder charges but is expected to plead guilty this fall, an Atlanta television station recently reported. Colin Gray is scheduled to stand trial in September.
“He had primary custody of Colt (and) he had knowledge of Colt’s obsessions with school shooters,” prosecutor Brad Smith said in a court hearing in October. “He had knowledge of Cole’s deteriorating mental state. And he provided the firearms and the ammunition that Colt used in this.”
contributed to this report.
