The third fatality was a victim, too

Be kind!

Blaska is getting soft in his old age. Also battling pneumonia this week. So might not be in his right mind. The old guy is a honking, sniffling, walking apothecary of pills, littering tissues throughout the Stately Manor.

“Officials identify victims,” reads the Page One headline in today’s Wisconsin State Journal. Our favorite Madison morning newspaper has been all over the shooting Monday 12-16-24 at Abundant Life Christian School. They’re doing a great job. Reporting on a breaking story that changes hour by hour is a real scramble. Been there, done that.

But we see pictured only two of the fatal victims; teacher Erin Michelle West and 14-year-old student Rubi Patricia Vergera. They are remembered fondly. Not to quibble but there is a third fatality, Natalie Rupnow, age 15. She shot to death the other two and wounded another six students before taking her own life before police arrived. Can we say Natalie was a victim, too?

 A life in three photos

Our platinum+ subscribers may have accessed photos of the poor girl already. We link to 1) Trap shooting at an area gun club, 2) possibly taking a selfie, and 3) playing with her dogs. All were posted by her father, indicating some love and pride in his daughter. But the girl may have had a rocky road. Her parents divorced in August 2014 but apparently remarried. From December 2020 through August 2022 her parents were again in divorce court and were ordered to attend parent education classes.

In all three photographs Natalie Rupnow appears to be wearing a black tee shirt with the letters KMFDM. That’s a German industrial rock band followed by the students who carried out the 1999 massacre at Columbine high school in Colorado. We have not seen her supposed “manifesto.”

Abundant Life practiced active shooter drills but the small school does not have metal detectors. Processing 420 students every morning through a metal detector does not seem feasible. An on-site school resource police officer might have helped but only if s/he were in the right place at the right time. It is not hard to imagine that all nine casualties transpired in less than 30 seconds. Like most school shootings, this wasn’t the work of an outsider, but of a student. A child. The one policy prescription we could offer is to arm teachers who volunteer and train for that responsibility and are indemnified by the district. Students need not know which teacher, only that some are prepared. That would be a real deterrent, mental health issues aside.

It is also counter-intuitive that this mayhem occurred in a faith-based school, not a more impersonal (one might think) public school.

→ “Six common factors in the school shooting at Abundant Life” 

UPDATE: it also appears the girl had been in contact with one Alexander Paffendorf, a 20-year-old man in Carlsbad, California (near San Diego) who was plotting a mass shooting with the teenager. Using the red flag law, a judge ordered police to confiscate his weapons.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Natalie Rupnow’s list of casualties is longer than that of, say, Luigi Mangione. Does that make her more of a villain? We don’t know if the girl was bullied at school or acting out from her home life. Regardless, we take as our watchword today yard signs you can still see in Sauk County, posted after a bullied student committed suicide. Be Kind.

What do you see?