Seven months after tragedy struck a Madison high school, the father of a school shooter that took the lives of two and injured six others was ordered to stand trial for his alleged role in the devastating act.
Dane County Court Commissioner John Rome allowed the case against Jeffrey Rupnow, father of the school shooter, Natalie Rupnow, to proceed to trial. Rupnow is charged with two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a minor and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 18 years in prison.
The December 16th shooting that took the life of teacher Erin Michelle West and 14-year-old student Rubi Bergara was carried out using a 9mm Glock handgun as well as a .22 Sig Sauer pistol. Both firearms were purchased by her father as a way to connect with her after her parents’ divorce.
Charging parents of minors who carry out mass shootings is a relatively recent and controversial use of prosecutorial discretion. In April of last year, Oxford, Michigan shooter Ethan Crumbley’s parents were the first to be criminally convicted. Both were sentenced to at least ten years in prison.
Rupnow’s manifesto, titled ‘War Against Humanity’, described humanity as ‘filth’ and detailed her hatred for people who “smoke their lungs out with weed or drink as much as they can like my own father” while idolizing a number of other infamous mass shooters.
For his part, Jeffrey Rupnow said that he never explicitly told his daughter the code to the gun safe, but did tell her that it was his social security number backwards. He claimed that Natalie’s mother may have given her the number to unlock the safe, urging police to check her electronic devices.
