Lyndsay O’Connor’s daughter didn’t want to go to school on Monday at Abundant Life Christian School. There was nothing particularly unusual about that. She was up late wrapping Christmas presents and the holidays are getting close.
Then, on the way to school, O’Connor encountered black ice, so she drove slowly to school, resulting in a late arrival.
About three hours later, O’Connor’s daughter Mackynzie was in a classroom with the door open. She believes the active shooter – a 15-year-old classmate named Natalie (Samantha) Rupnow –walked past that classroom on her way to the study hall where she opened fire, but she was engaged in classwork and didn’t look up to see her. It was middle school pajama day at the school.
“Mackynzie said she walked by our door; she went to that room,” O’Connor said. “We don’t know if her target was the original teacher or just the kids in the class. She would have had to walk by the door and the door was open.”
O’Connor spoke in depth about the mass shooting with Wisconsin Right Now on December 17, and she shed light on the suspect’s personality. O’Connor’s son is also at the school. He told her he believed that one bullet “went through the wall and ricocheted and hit” another teacher in the leg.
“She died a broken girl. She died unheard, and she found solace in a bunch of people who didn’t promote goodness,” O’Connor said of Rupnow, 15.
O’Connor said that Rupnow “was very much to herself. She wore a collared shirt with a tie, jeans, and combat boots.” Rupnow “weirded her (daughter) out, but she decided to be nice to her a month into school and to be talking to her. She (Rupnow) pounded energy drinks. Little shots of energy things, and she kept to herself.”
She said that Rupnow had changed her name to Samantha before she transferred to Abundant Life. “No one knows her as Natalie. My daughter said, ‘But her name is Samantha, mom.’ Or Sam.” She has no evidence that the suspect was transgender, non-binary, or used “they” pronouns, which is an unsourced claim that ricocheted around social media.
“That is not a statement we will make. We are not speaking to her being non-binary. She had a boyfriend,” O’Connor said (the police chief has refused to elaborate on that angle but did say the suspect was female.)
Her daughter’s locker was next to Rupnow’s, who was described by O’Connor as an “odd version of preppie in a way. Not goth. (She) would wear white shirts and black ties. A weird group. She didn’t keep a tidy locker. She didn’t have a lot of friends and was very isolated.”
But she stopped short of saying Rupnow was bullied. “I think anyone can take anything as bullying these days, but that is not a typical MO at that school,” she said.
She said her daughter told her that Rupnow took the bus to school and kids believe “she didn’t have a good home life. She asked about her boyfriend when she saw her texting. She was texting her boyfriend and he was in Germany. How do you get a boyfriend from Germany? The Internet.” (Court records show the family had multiple divorces and a complex custody arrangement).
“Apparently, Rupnow arrived late and was still able to enter the school – which would make sense since she was a student,” O’Connor said.
Tragedy in the Study Hall
The teacher who normally ran the study hall was spared a tragic fate by taking a preplanned vacation, O’Connor said. “It was a planned absence.” She had made the room into a comforting place and handpicked the students who would be there that day, O’Connor said.
Rupnow shot to death a substitute teacher who was running the study hall, killed a teenager, and shot another teacher and five other students. Two of the students are in critical condition, police said.
“The teacher died protecting her class. Many more lives could have been taken. She (Rupnow) sent off multiple rounds,” she said. “It sounds like the brave substitute teacher who fought Natalie Rupnow stood in the gap for the rest of the kids.”
The victims who died have now been named as teacher Erin West, 42, and Rubi P. Vergara, 14.
The gunshots, when they broke out, were faint and barely sounded like gunshots, but it wasn’t long before the loudspeaker warned of an active shooter: “This is not a drill.” O’Connor’s daughter told her the gunshots sounded like someone “tapping on a counter.” She thought it was maintenance work going on. Her teacher locked the door as a precaution. They were directly across from the study hall where the rampage was taking place. “Protocols commenced immediately,” the mom said.
In a classroom nearby, the police chief clarified that the first 911 call came from the 2nd grade teacher, not a 2nd grader as he initially said.
That’s about the time it’s believed Rupnow took her own life inside the school. Police were there in three minutes, the chief said. The shooter told people she had to go to the nurse before the shooting, but it’s not clear if she did, O’Connor said.
The kids huddled together, and later, they found sanctuary in a church, O’Connor said. The students prayed, and the teachers prayed with them, she said. The first thing Mackynzie told her mom when they were reunited was, “I told you I didn’t want to go to school today.”
Mackynzie told her mom that Rupnow was at the school “for at least the hour before. We don’t know if she didn’t like something about the study hall she went to or why she chose to go to the study hall.”
There’s a disturbing page on X that may be the shooter’s. It contains a final photo showing a person’s hand making the “OK” sign in what looks like a bathroom right before the shooting and other disturbing posts. Authorities have not publicly verified it. O’Connor said the bathroom in that photo looks like the one inside the school.
Rupnow’s dad’s Facebook page’s cover photo shows her wearing a T-shirt of a German/American industrial rock band called “KMFDM” while at a shooting range. That’s a band that the Columbine school shooters liked; they even planned their shooting on its album’s April release date. The page documents that she was called Natalie from birth and through her younger years, and it contains a number of religious posts.
Getting to the Root of the Problem
The day after the shooting, O’Connor said she was moved to write a message to President Donald Trump because she wants people to focus on the core issues.
“I think we have to get to the core of what’s getting on with children,” she said. “Why they get to this point. The breakdown and disillusionment of the family. It’s why I got into politics 2.5 years ago.” In fact, she did a paper on Columbine her senior year of high school and her daughter just wrote one too.
“It scares me to think they are breaking down families through the court system. People are so exhausted and financially strained,” O’Connor added.
She thinks there should be a program to monitor kids’ social media. “We need to get to the root and core of who these people are,” O’Connor said.
O’Connor is starting a Dane County chapter of Moms for America. “It has a huge Christian faith component,” she said. She sits on the board of the Republican Party of Dane County and on the board of the Republican Federated Women.
Police are investigating whether bullying was a factor, the chief said, and he added that “everyone was targeted” in the mass shooting.
The chief said on Monday that police were speaking with the father, Jeff Rupnow, per property records, but didn’t believe the parents would face criminal charges. He would not release what they found inside a search of the home on Delaware Blvd.
“That should have been a red flag to someone that she was changing her name that dramatically,” O’Connor said.
Barnes said on December 17 that police can not verify a document (purported manifesto) that has been widely shared online. They are trying to do so by searching the suspect’s computers to see if that document originated from her devices.
Police are “looking into her online activity” but would not release specifics about Rupnow’s social media accounts. “Identifying a motive is our top priority but at this time it appears that the motive was a combination of facts,” Barnes said, but he wouldn’t share them.
The president and Democratic politicians like Congressman Mark Pocan and County Executive Melissa Agard have tried to make the shooting lesson about gun control, politicizing it, but police have not said where Rupnow got the firearm, and it’s already illegal in Wisconsin for a 15 year old to possess a handgun.
Parents Rush to the Scene
O’Connor received a call from a friend while she was driving who told her, “You need to call your kids and make sure they’re safe. There’s an active shooter.” That’s the first she learned about it.
The parents were taken to a basement area with limited phone service and “packed in with sardines.”
“You can’t plan for this. We just had to wait. They couldn’t have planned better,” she said. They signed a form and had limited phone service. “We just had to wait.”
At one point, O’Connor said she “stood up and asked, ‘Can we pray?’ I stood up on a chair and prayed.”
She said, “That’s the difference between private and public school.”
Her son called her from an unknown number, screaming. “They got him to stop for a minute to say they had left the school. They were in the church sanctuary and were safe and he had eyes on his sister. At that point, I could stop crying.”
The school community is “like family,” O’Connor said. She graduated from the same school.
The community support meant a lot. “We were showered with food and water.”
