Madison, Wis. – Wisconsin prosecutors accused the father of a teenager who killed a teacher and fellow student in a shooting at school last year for allowing access to the semi -automatic guns he used in the attack.
The criminal complaint against Jeffrey Rupnow by Madison, 42, details how her daughter, Natalie Ruppo, fought with the divorce of her parents, showing her anger in a written piece entitled “War against humanity.” Her father tried to join her through weapons, according to the complaint, even while the attack, including the construction of a cardboard model of the school and programming the shooting to end her suicide.
The prosecutors filed the complaint on Wednesday, but they did not reveal it until after Jeffrey Rupnow was arrested Thursday and taken to the Dane County prison. It faces two positions of giving an intentionally dangerous weapon to a person under 18 who causes death and contributes to the crime of a child. All charges are serious crimes.
He was scheduled to make his initial appearance in the Court on Friday. Online judicial records did not list a lawyer for him. Madison’s interim police chief John Patterson said he was cooperative throughout the investigation. No one returned the voice emails that were left in possible telephone listings for him and his ex -wife, Melissa Rupnow.
Attack left 2 dead, 6 injured
Natalie Rupnow entered abundant Life Christian School, a religious school in Madison offered by Pre -Kindergarten through secondary classes, on December 16 and opened fire in a study room. He killed the teacher Erin Michelle West and the 14 -year -old student Rubi Bergara and wounded another six before committing suicide.
According to the complaint, the investigators recovered 20 housings from the study room where it opened fire.
They also recovered a 9 mm Gock gun that Jeffrey Rupnow had bought him in the room and a. Jeffrey Rupnow had given him that weapon as a Christmas gift in 2023, says the complaint.
Also in the bag there were three magazines loaded with .22 ammunition and a box of 50 rounds of 9 mm ammunition. He wore a black t -shirt stamped with a bull eye during the attack.
Natalie Rupnow had been fighting with the divorce of the parents
Jeffrey Rupnow told researchers that her daughter lived with him, but had been fighting her mother’s divorce in 2022, saying she hated her life and wanted to commit suicide. He said she used to cut himself to the point where he had to lock all the knives at home.
She had been in therapy to learn to be more social to spring before the attack, she told researchers. His mother, Melissa Rupnow, told detectives that the therapist told him that Natalie was suffering a post -traumatic stress disorder derived from divorce. One of Natalie’s friends told researchers that Jeffrey Rupnow was “frequently aggressive” with Natalie and that she had told her that her father was a “drinker,” according to the complaint.
Jeffery Rupnow told the researchers that they led Natalie to shoot with him on the land of a friend about two years before the abundant attack of life. She enjoyed it, and he came to see weapons as a way to connect with her. But he was surprised by how his interest in “snow,” he told the researchers.
He kept Natalie’s guns in a gun safe, telling him that if he ever need them, the access code was their social security number. Approximately 10 days before the school attack, he sent a text message to a friend and said that Natalie would shoot him if he left “the fun open at this time,” according to the complaint.
The day before the school attack he took the Sig Sauer from the safe so that Natalie could clean it. But he was distracted and was not sure if he put the weapon again in the safe or locked it, according to the complaint.
‘War against humanity’
A search in Natalie’s room scored a six -page document that the girl had written entitled “War against humanity.” The piece began describing humanity as “dirt” and saying that I hated people who do not care and “smoke their lungs with grass or drink as much as my own father may like.”
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 father’s stupidity.”
The researchers also discovered school maps and a cardboard model of the building, along with a handwritten schedule that detailed what the attack would be at 11:30 am and eliminated the first and second floor of the school at 11:55 am
He had been communicating in line with people around the world about his fascination with school shootings and weapons, Madison’s interim chief John Patterson said Thursday.
The father calls to teach his security security of his weapon. “
Jeffery Rupnow sent a message to a detective two weeks after the shooting at school saying that his greatest mistake was to teach Natalie how to drive weapons safely and urge the police to warn people to change their safe combinations of weapons every two or three months, the complaint said.
“Children are intelligent and will solve it,” he wrote. “Like someone who tries to hack your bank account. I just want to protect other families from going through what I am going through.”
According to the complaint, after learning that Natalie was the shooter while talking to a police officer, Melissa Rupnow began to breathe very quickly through her nose and shouted something, in the sense of: “I’m going to kill him, I’m going to kill him,” apparently referring to his ex -husband.
The charges are the last in a series of cases against parents in school shootings
Jeffrey Rupnow is the last father of a school shooter to face positions 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 homicide. The mother was the first mother in the United States to be responsible for a child who made a massive 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 positions that include second degree murder and involuntary homicide for letting his son have a weapon.
In 2023, the father of a man accused in a mortal shooting in a parade on July 4 in the suburbs of Chicago declared himself guilty of seven minor crimes related to the way his son obtained a weapons license.
