Investigators recovered 2 handguns from Madison school shooting, but say only 1 was used in killings

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes says officers recovered two handguns from Abundant Life Christian School after a student there opened fire Monday morning.

However, he says, it appears the 15-year-old shooter only used one of those guns to shoot others and herself. The other gun was not used, Barnes said in a Wednesday evening interview with WPR.

Barnes said investigators have traced the origins of the weapons thanks to expedited assistance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Barnes declined to release that information on Wednesday, however, citing an ongoing investigation.

Report: California man accused of planning attack along with shooter

Meanwhile, court records show a California man was accused of plotting with the shooter to carry out an attack on a government building, according to a report from a San Diego-area news station.

CBS 8 said it obtained court records showing FBI agents served a civil gun restraining order to 20-year-old Alexander Paffendorf of Carlsbad after they found messages between him and the Madison shooter. The messages detailed plans to “arm himself with explosives and a gun and that he would target a government building,” he told the FBI.

California court records available online show that a gun violence restraining order was issued for Paffendorf on Tuesday.

Police search mother’s Janesville home

In the interview with WPR, Barnes also said that investigators have searched the home of the shooter’s mother in Janesville. He had previously confirmed to reporters that police searched a Madison home Monday, where the shooter lived with her father.

Neither of those searches required warrants, Barnes said, because the residents agreed to let police search the premises.

The shooter’s parents are divorced, online court records show. They filed for divorce in 2014 before remarrying each other and then filing for divorce again in 2020, according to court records.

Barnes said Wednesday that the shooter’s family continues to be cooperative.

In the coming days, Barnes said the investigation is focused on piecing together “what the shooter’s final days may have looked like.”

“Part of that is looking at digital evidence that includes cell phones or computer access and things of that nature,” Barnes said. “For most teenagers, they do a lot of their communicating on their phones. But it does take some time to do that, what we call cell phone analysis.”

He said detectives are continuing to interview people who knew the shooter, as well as people who were in the school while the tragedy unfolded.

But Barnes said law enforcement isn’t rushing witnesses.

“We will always take interviews from people when they’re ready to speak about what they may have seen or heard,” Barnes said. “That process may never be over. There may be people, you know, six months from now that want to talk to us and tell us what they saw. But we do have to respect the fact that we have survivors of a school shooting, a mass shooting, mass killing, and they will reserve the right to take information when they’re ready to give it.”

He said investigators are still working to authenticate a document that’s circulating on social media, purported to be written by the shooter ahead of the killings.

The two people killed by the shooter were a teenage student and a teacher, officials have confirmed. The shooter, Natalie Rupnow, who went by Samantha, appears to have died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police have said.

At least six other people were injured in the shooting, including a teacher, officials have said. All of the injured students were high schoolers who were inside the study hall where the shooter opened fire, Barnes said. 

Abundant Life, a nondenominational Christian school, serves more than 400 students in pre-Kindergarten through high school.

Since the Columbine massacre in 1999, there have been 426 school shootings, and just 4 percent of those shooters have been female, according to a tally by the Washington Post.

If you are in crisis, call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.

People who interacted with the shooter in the days and weeks leading up to the incident can share information anonymously through Madison Area Crime Stoppers at p3tips.com or by calling 608-266-6014.