48 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
48 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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category: "Terrorism"
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tags:
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- Event
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- NVE
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- TerrorgramCollective
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- TrueCrimeCommunity
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- SaintsCulture
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- Wisconsin
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- USA
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- SchoolShooting
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date: 2024-12-16
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location: Madison, Wisconsin
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created: 2026-05-21
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updated: 2026-05-21
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summary: On December 16, 2024, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow killed two people at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin in an attack traced to radicalization through WatchPeopleDie and 764/Terrorgram-adjacent content.
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---
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On December 16, 2024, [[Natalie Rupnow]] (15) attacked [[Abundant Life Christian School]] in [[Madison, Wisconsin]] during a mixed-grade study hall, killing substitute teacher [[Erin M. West]] (42) and fellow student [[Rubi P. Vergara]] (14) and wounding six others before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound during transport to hospital. Investigators recovered a manifesto titled "War Against Humanity" from her home. The [[Institute for Strategic Dialogue]] (ISD) classified her as a [[Nihilistic Violent Extremism|nihilistic violent extremist]] whose radicalization ran from the [[WatchPeopleDie]] gore website through [[764 Network|764]]-affiliated and [[Terrorgram Collective]]-adjacent content.
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### The Attack
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Rupnow entered Abundant Life Christian School during school hours and opened fire in a study hall that contained students from multiple grades. West and Vergara were killed at the scene. Six additional students and one teacher sustained wounds; two students were hospitalized in critical condition with life-threatening injuries. Rupnow died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound while being transported to hospital.
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She used firearms owned by her father, [[Jeffrey Rupnow]] (43), who kept them in a safe but had shared the combination with her. The day before the attack he removed a Sig Sauer pistol from the safe and asked her to clean it.
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### Radicalization and Online Network
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ISD and [[ADL]] researchers documented that Rupnow held 16 social media accounts, nearly all containing references to past mass shooters. Her documented radicalization pathway ran from [[WatchPeopleDie]] (account created June 2023) through white supremacist, misogynistic, and antisemitic online spaces, into 764-affiliated content and a [[Telegram]] group connected to [[Arda Küçükyetim]]'s August 2024 [[2024 Eskisehir Mosque Stabbing|Eskisehir mosque stabbing]] livestream, which was itself affiliated with Terrorgram Collective.
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Her manifesto described humanity as "filth" and expressed admiration for past mass shooters, fitting the misanthropic nihilist profile that ISD uses to distinguish [[Nihilistic Violent Extremism|NVE]] cases from ideologically coherent [[Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremism|IMVE]]. The [[True Crime Community]] (TCC) fandom and the SAVF ([[Soyjak Attacker Video Fandom]]) subculture, both of which treat mass killers as cultural figures for consumption and glorification, were documented as central to her online activity.
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### Rupnow and Solomon Henderson
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The WatchPeopleDie account registration dates and social media overlaps placed Rupnow in the same online milieu as [[Solomon Henderson]], the 17-year-old who killed one student at [[Antioch High School]] in Nashville, Tennessee on January 22, 2025. Both created WatchPeopleDie accounts in June 2023, and the two had followed each other on [[X (Twitter)|X]]. PBS Wisconsin reported that their online presence overlapped in at least the WatchPeopleDie and X contexts.
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Nashville Metropolitan Police Department's January 2026 investigation into Henderson found no evidence of co-conspirators or direct coordination between Rupnow and Henderson. The shared online spaces reflected convergent radicalization through the same platform ecosystems rather than a coordinated connection.[^1]
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### Legal Outcomes
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Because Rupnow died at the scene, she faced no criminal proceedings. In May 2025, Dane County prosecutors charged her father Jeffrey Rupnow on two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a minor and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. A Dane County Court Commissioner ordered him to stand trial on July 24, 2025. The charges carry a combined maximum of 18 years in prison.
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Rupnow's mother died of an apparent suicide following the shooting.[^2]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: ISD. "Terror without ideology: The rise of nihilistic violence." https://www.isdglobal.org/digital-dispatch/terror-without-ideology-the-rise-of-nihilistic-violence-an-isd-investigation/; PBS Wisconsin. "Madison and Nashville school shooters appear to have crossed paths in online extremist communities." https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/madison-and-nashville-school-shooters-appear-to-have-crossed-paths-in-online-extremist-communities/
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[^2]: PBS Wisconsin. "Judge orders Abundant Life shooter's father to stand trial." https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/judge-orders-abundant-life-shooters-father-to-stand-trial/; WPR. "Mother of Abundant Life shooter dies of apparent suicide." https://www.wpr.org/news/mother-abundant-life-christian-school-shooter-apparent-suicide
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