Madison community unites to mourn victims of Abundant Life Christian School shooting | The Wisconsin Independent
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Mourners write on three wooden crosses outside the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison on Dec. 17, 2024, during a vigil honoring the victims of a shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School. (Photo by Olivia Herken.)

Just before 11 a.m. on Dec. 16, a second grade teacher at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison called 911: There was a shooting at their school.

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow opened fire in a study hall, killing a teacher and another student, before apparently shooting herself. Six others were injured. Police are still investigating to determine a motive and to figure out how Rupnow got the handgun she used. It was Wisconsin’s deadliest school shooting on record.

Instead of students excited about the week leading up to Christmas break, which was supposed to be filled with basketball games and an ugly Christmas sweater spirit day, the community was thrust into mourning. Mourners set up a memorial outside the small, private Christian school — now a crime scene. On Dec. 17, several hundred people gathered outside the Wisconsin State Capitol to hold an evening candlelight vigil. Hundreds more attended City Church next to the school for a prayer service.

”As a community, we must not allow violence or any act of violence to define us. We refuse to allow hate, destruction to win in this city, but rather we will honor our survivors, our victims through love, support in the Madison way,” Barnes said at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, calling the circumstances a “hurting and haunting situation.”

The vigil downtown was a somber event. Positioned between the glowing Capitol building and a lit Christmas tree were three wooden crosses that community members signed and paid respect to, placing candles and flowers at their bases. The smell of melting wax and scented candles that people brought from home filled the chilly air as people helped each other light their wicks. Gospel music played on speakers, and just as nearby church bells started to chime at 6 p.m., the vigil began. People embraced one another and shed tears.

Hundreds of people gather in Madison at a vigil on Dec. 17, 2024, to remember the victims of the shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School. (Photo by Olivia Herken.)

Ellie West, a 20-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was working at a day care when she heard about the shooting. The staff called parents to make sure their older children were OK, and West contacted a family she nannies for to check on them.

“All my coworkers were walking around crying. It was horrible,” West told the Wisconsin Independent.

Both of West’s parents are high school teachers in St. Louis, where she’s from. West said she worries about them every day when they go to work, and she’s afraid for the young children she works with who will grow up and go to school.

“I just wanted to show support. I know that this is really hard,” West said. “I just feel like I needed to come and show that Madison is behind them, the students are behind them, and we care.”

Lara Kenny knew some of the students at Abundant Life, having coached them and her son on a volleyball team. When she heard about the shooting, she scrambled to contact the parents of one of them, and she eventually learned that none of them were physically injured. Then she thought about her own son, who goes to a different high school, wondering if she should let him know what happened at his friends’ school.

Kenny said it felt good to gather as a community for the vigil, saying that the shooting has affected so many people. “I ran into several people. I ran into a firefighter who responded yesterday, parents at several other schools on the east side of Madison who all have friends at Abundant Life,” she said.

While many parents in the community grappled with whether or not to send their children to school the day after the shooting, Kenny decided to. She said it was unsettling, but no more so than other days. “Because this is how we live,” she said, referring to the threat of school shootings that hangs over families and students and staff every day.

“Our kids, my kids, teachers across our community, and in fact across our nation, had to wake up and go to school today, and that was an act of bravery,” Dane County Executive Melissa Agard said during the press conference Tuesday afternoon. “Parents dropping their children off, after what we witnessed yesterday, took an act of bravery and a belief in our community. And that’s a bravery we should not have to put on the shoulders of our children and our families in our community.”

Agard said it was hard for her son to get up and go to school the morning after the shooting, and that kids live in a different world than she grew up in, with more access to information and news.

“Part of the reason I feel so pained by this tragedy is that mass shootings feel like something that’s ominous and hovering and we’re all wondering where and when the next one is going to occur. And guess what? It happened here, it happened right here,” Agard said.

The community has rallied around the victims and survivors in the days since the shooting. Agard said it was part of the “Dane County way” to be united in healing and processing the tragic incident, which has drawn national attention, from President Joe Biden to Sesame Street. United Way of Dane County has set up an emergency recovery fund for those affected by the shooting, which as of Tuesday night had raised more than $21,000. The city of Madison launched a resource page on its website connecting community members with mental health support and ways to help victims.

As police continue to investigate the shooting and the community braces for a holiday season darkened by the incident, Kenny said the feeling she’s left with is disappointment. “Disappointment that we can’t collectively do something about gun violence, and that we aren’t giving our young kids what they need in schools. For the young shooters that commit these crimes around the country, it’s just really, really sad,” she said.

West called on lawmakers to act. “Grief is not where we stop here. This is, unfortunately, a tragedy that has happened before, and it is going to happen again if we don’t make actual, real change on gun legislation. And so I’d like to call on Congress to please do something, because I don’t want to see one of my kids’ faces —” she said, choking up. “I love my kids, and I want them to be safe when they go to school. Because they deserve that.”

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