A 15-year-old girl opened fire in a Wisconsin school classroom on Monday, fatally shooting a fellow student and a teacher and wounding six other people before killing herself with the handgun, police said.
The shooting took place in a mixed-grade study hall shortly before 11 a.m. (1700 GMT) at the Abundant Life Christian School, which has 420 students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
The shooter was a student at the school, identified by police as Natalie Rupnow, who also went by the name Samantha.
A second-grade student, who would generally be 7 or 8 years old, called 911 to report the shooting at the school, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes told a press conference.
“Let that soak in for a minute,” Barnes said.
The two shot dead were a teenage student and a teacher, Barnes said without identifying the victims.
Two wounded students were in critical condition with life-threatening injuries, while another teacher and three other students were wounded and expected to survive.
School shootings have been a macabre routine in the United States, with 322 of them this year, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database website. That is the second highest total of any year since 1966, according to that database – topped only by last year’s total of 349 such shootings.
Monday’s rampage was a rarity in that it was carried about by a girl. Only about 3% of all U.S. mass shootings perpetrated by females, studies show.
