Wisconsin: Teacher and student killed as teenage girl opens fire in school
Police say the suspect was a teenage student at the private Christian school.
Tuesday 17 December 2024 04:10, UK
Three people, including a teenage suspect, have died and several are injured after a shooting at a school in Wisconsin.
A teacher and a teenage student were killed in the attack at Abundant Life Christian School in the state capital Madison.
The suspect has been identified as a 15-year-old female student Natalie Rupnow, who went by the name Samantha and was a pupil at the school.
Police said the body of the teenager was found by officers who stormed the school, suggesting the suspect killed themselves.
A handgun was recovered after the attack.
Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said that it was a second-grade student who made the initial call to report the shooting to authorities just before 11am.
"I'm feeling a little dismayed now, so close to Christmas," Mr Barnes said.
"Every child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever. We need to figure out and try to piece together what exactly happened."
He said officers had found "multiple victims with gunshot wounds when they arrived at the scene".
"Officers located a juvenile, who they believed was responsible for this, deceased in the building."
At least six people were wounded, with two students in a critical condition with four other people having non-life-threatening injuries.
Video posted from the scene on social media showed a significant emergency response, including police, ambulance and fire vehicles.
The school is a private institution that teaches some 400 students from kindergarten through 12th grade, according to its website.
US President Joe Biden has been briefed on the shooting, the White House said.
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Wisconsin governor Tony Evers said: "As a father, a grandfather, and as governor, it is unthinkable that a kid or an educator might wake up and go to school one morning and never come home.
"This should never happen, and I will never accept this as a foregone reality or stop working to change it."
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There have been a total of 486 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Of the 15,992 killed in 2024, 236 were children between the age of 0-11 and 1,100 were teenagers between 12-17.