ANDY NGO EXCLUSIVE: Student speaks out about Abundant Life School shooter Natalie Rupnow

"We were walking down the stairs, and there was a trail of blood on every single step."

A source at Abundant Life Christian School has spoken exclusively with The Post Millennial about the deadly mass school shooting in Madison, Wisc. last month. The source, a student, shed light on who the mysterious teen girl shooter was and what happened on campus just days before the school was to go on break for Christmas and New Year's.

The Dec. 16 shooting carried out by 15-year-old Natalie Lynn Rupnow claimed the life of substitute teacher Erin West and 14-year-old Rubi Vergara. Two boys were seriously injured and remain hospitalized. Four others were treated and released.

Natalie Lynn Rupnow, who used the name 'Samantha'

Police say the girl then turned her pistol on herself and died.

The shooting in the school's second-floor study hall a few minutes before 11 a.m. was over almost as quickly as it had begun. Rupnow was not a student in that particular class.

"I didn't hear any gunshots," the source said. He was just down the hallway on the same floor. "None of my classmates that were in class with me heard anything." The shooting is believed to have lasted at most a couple of minutes.

The Madison Police have declined to state what firearm or possible attachments, such as a silencer, were used beyond saying they recovered a pistol and a second weapon. 

When the lockdown alarm rang out, many students thought it was a drill. Within a few minutes, police cars with blazing sirens swarmed the campus. Only when the source and his classmates were evacuated from the building did they realize something horrific had happened after seeing blood in the hallway and on the stairs.

Though school shootings are relatively common in the U.S.—the Washington Post has identified at least 426 incidents since the late 90s—the fact that this shooter was a girl is unusual. There have only been nine female students who committed school shootings, accounting for about four percent of the database. Rupnow was also younger than the average school shooter.

An academic study on school shootings published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics in 2023 found the average age to be 16, with 60 percent of shooters being black, 28 percent white and eight percent Latino. The remaining 5.7 percent represented multiple ethnic groups.

Rupnow, the small-frame girl with dirty blonde hair and glasses, was also a mystery to those at the school. She had only transferred to the K-12 Christian school back in August as a freshman. She went by "Samantha," an adopted name, and kept to herself. 

"She would be on her computer listening to music," the source recalls from his time in study halls with her. The source says he didn't know her to be bullied or targeted at the school. "[Abundant Life] doesn't really bully, the worst that happens is no one really goes up and talks to you so you're just kind of left alone."

When Rupnow did speak to peers, she spoke about her online friends and how she had an online boyfriend from Germany. She also allegedly told them her father treated her "badly," without elaborating further.

Rupnow had a tumultuous upbringing.

Her parents, Jeff and Melissa Rupnow, divorced and remarried each other three times between 2011–21. Her school history before Abundant Life is not known. Mr. Rupnow did not respond to a request for comment.

According to sources who knew the family, the girl's father had primary custody and was a practicing Christian involved in a local Lutheran church. 

Madison Police have so far not discussed any possible motives the shooter may have had. But her computer and extensive online history may be the key to learning who she was. 

At 10:45 a.m. local time, the account "@postalbrained" on X posted a first-person photo from inside a bathroom stall showing an "okay" hand symbol looking down on black shoes. A follow-up post was a link to a private Google Doc file. A teacher called 911 about the shooting at around 10:57 a.m. 

Two sources connected to the school say they recognize the tiling and stalls as being those in one of the two girls' bathrooms on the ground floor of the campus building. Police say they cannot verify the authenticity of photos attributed to Rupnow.

Natalie 'Samantha' Rupnow was a fan of the same German band adored by one of the Columbine High School shooters

Rupnow operated multiple usernames across a handful of social media sites and apps, including Discord, Spotify, CashApp, TikTok and Tumblr. As at school, she went by "Samantha" or "Sam." Her accounts and posts point to an obsession with mass shooters, school shootings, suicide and death.

Using the screen name, "@crossixir," Rupnow also had an account on "watchpeopledie.tv," a website that posts graphic videos of people being killed. In the summer, she responded to a video titled, "Women [sic] shoot herself after finding out her husband died." 

"Honestly I would do the same," Rupnow wrote.

Natalie Rupnow's Discord account

One of the photos Rupnow shared of herself on Discord was a selfie of her wearing a shirt for the band KMFDM. The German industrial band was infamously referenced by one of the 1999 Columbine High School shooters. Rupnow can be seen wearing the same shirt at a shooting range in a photo posted to her father's Facebook.

Natalie Rupnow shooting at the North Bristol Sportsman's Club in Sun Prairie, Wisc. 

Natalie Rupnow's mother posted a photo of her daughter at a different school before she transferred to Abundant Life Christian School 

On her CashApp, she used an image of the Columbine shooters as her profile image.

A purported "sneak peak" manifesto posted on her Discord account alludes to Rupnow's misandry. However, this theme is not carried over in the alleged six-page manifesto published on X by journalist Anna Slatz. 

That longer document, purportedly sent to her German online boyfriend, references details about her biography—some of which have been independently verified as accurate. The document expresses resentment and hatred of family, society and humanity. It also pays homage to other mass killers.

Natalie Rupnow's online accounts usually featured photos of mass killers, like the Columbine High School shooters seen on her profile photo on CashApp

"We are looking into the suspect's online activity," a Madison Police spokesperson told TPM. "We are aware there are photos and documents floating around the internet but cannot verify their authenticity at this time."

Natalie Rupnow's at her father's house in 2022 

Abundant Life Christian School is scheduled to tentatively restart classes sometime during the second week of January. The community is still in shock. The two boys who were seriously injured were in a coma but are now reportedly stable. One had been shot in the abdomen and head, the other shot in the throat.

"I just thought she was a quiet kid," the student source said. "She seemed like a normal kid."

Andy Ngo is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy."