The 15-year-old student, who opened fire at a Wisconsin school and killed two people, was in therapy due to her troubled family life, marked by parents’ repeated divorces, according to court records.
Natalie ‘Samantha’ Rupnow, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound following the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School, struggled with a fractured family environment. Her parents frequently separated and reconciled, court documents obtained by the Washington Post show.
Rupnow’s parents, Mellissa and Jeff Rupnow, first married in 2011, two years after the birth of their daughter. Natalie, who recently began using the name Samantha, was caught in their turbulent relationship. The couple divorced in 2014 and agreed to share custody of their daughter. She primarily resided with her mother.
Then they remarried in 2017. But the cycle of separation and reconciliation continued. The couple divorced for the second time in 2020. This time, they arranged an alternating custody schedule, with Natalie spending two days with her father, two days with her mother, and so on, court records indicate.
They married again for the third time, only to separate and divorce months later. The court instructed the couple not to marry again, though they would share custody of Natalie. This time, she mainly lived with her father.
By 2022, Natalie, then 12, was undergoing therapy to help determine which parent she would live with. The court also ordered the couple to share joint custody again.
Before Natalie’s birth, her mother had been married and divorced and had another daughter, who was raised by different guardians, according to the court documents. Meanwhile, Jeff Rupnow often posted on social media about his daughter’s accomplishments, including her achievements in karate. In a concerning post from August 2024, Jeff shared a photo of Natalie shooting a rifle at a local sports club they joined earlier that year and thoroughly enjoying the experience.
On the morning of the school shooting, Natalie opened fire in a study hall at Abundant Life Christian School. The attack left a substitute teacher and a teenager dead; another instructor and five students were injured. Two of the wounded remain critical, though authorities have yet to identify the victims.
The police are still probing the motive behind the shooting.
