The motive for a shooting that killed a teacher and a student and wounded others at a Wisconsin school appears to be a “combination of factors,” a police chief said on Tuesday as he appealed to the public to share what they might know about the 15-year-old girl who attacked a study hall before shooting herself.

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes offered no details about a possible motive, though he said bullying at Abundant Life Christian School would be investigated.

Barnes said police are investigating writings that may have been penned by Natalie Rupnow and could shed light on her actions.

“Identifying a motive is our top priority, but at this time it appears that the motive is a combination of factors,” the chief told reporters.

Barnes gave the number to a tip line for anyone who might have known the shooter and her feelings.

“There are always signs of a school shooting before it occurred. We’re looking into her online activity,” he said.

Besides the deaths, six people were wounded, including two students who remain in critical condition. The shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot.

Barnes made remarks at a news conference but left without taking questions from reporters, leaving the Madison mayor and Dane County executive to face the media. They declined to disclose the names of the victims.

“Leave them alone,” Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway snapped.

Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school — prekindergarten through high school — with approximately 420 students in Madison, the state capital.

Mackenzie Truitt, 24, placed a red poinsettia plant at the school to honor the victims Tuesday. She said her brother is a graduate and some of his friends were wounded.

“My heart sunk because I know how awesome a lot of these kids are,” Truitt said. “I know how scared everybody was. Couldn’t get a hold of certain people. Just really scary having to deal with that.”

Barbara Wiers, the school’s director of elementary and school relations, said when they practice safety routines, leaders always announce that it’s a drill. That didn’t happen Monday, the last week before Christmas break.

“When they heard, ‘lockdown, lockdown,’ they knew it was real,” she said.

Wiers said the school does not have metal detectors but uses cameras and other security measures.

Barnes said police were talking with the shooter’s father and other family members, who were cooperating, and searching the shooter’s home.

The shooter’s parents, who are divorced, jointly shared custody of their child, but the shooter primarily lived with her 42-year-old father, according to court documents.

Barnes said the first 911 call to report an active shooter came in shortly before 11 a.m. from a second-grade teacher — not a second-grade student as he reported publicly Monday.

First responders who were in training just 3 miles (about 5 kilometers) away dashed to the school for an actual emergency, Barnes said. They arrived three minutes after the initial call.

Investigators believe the shooter used a 9mm pistol, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Children and families were reunited at a health clinic about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the school. Parents pressed children against their chests while others squeezed hands and shoulders as they walked side by side.

Bethany Highman, the mother of a student, rushed to the school and learned over FaceTime that her daughter was OK.

“As soon as it happened, your world stops for a minute. Nothing else matters,” Highman said. “There’s nobody around you. You just bolt for the door and try to do everything you can as a parent to be with your kids.”

In a statement, President Joe Biden cited the tragedy in calling on Congress to pass universal background checks, a national red flag law and certain gun restrictions.

“We can never accept senseless violence that traumatizes children, their families, and tears entire communities apart,” Biden said.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said it’s “unthinkable” that a child or teacher would go to school and never return home.

The school shooting was the latest among dozens across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas.

The shootings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to doing active shooter drills in their classrooms. But school shootings have done little to move the needle on national gun laws.

Firearms were the leading cause of death among children in 2020 and 2021, according to KFF, a nonprofit that researches health care issues.

Washington, United States:

A 15-year-old female student was identified by police as the assailant who opened fire Monday at a school in the US state of Wisconsin, where a fellow student and teacher were killed and the suspected shooter was found dead.

Shon Barnes, police chief in the state capital Madison, told a press briefing that three people had died and seven others were wounded at the Abundant Life Christian School, a private Christian school with about 400 students.

“The shooter has now been identified as (a) 15-year-old,” Barnes told reporters, identifying the minor by name.

“She was a student at the school, and evidence suggests she died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” he added. 

Barnes said a second-grade student called emergency services to report the shooting shortly before 11:00 am local time (1700 GMT).

Of the six wounded victims who were hospitalized, two students remain in critical condition with life-threatening injuries, two people are in stable condition, and two have been discharged from hospital, the police chief said.

A handgun was recovered at the scene, Barnes said, adding that the suspect’s family was cooperating with the police investigation.

“We are still working to determine a motive,” he said.

One witness interviewed by local media said they had heard two gunshots during the attack.

“We heard them and then some people started crying and then we just waited until the police came and then they escorted us out to the church,” said the child, who was not identified. 

Monday’s violence is the latest in a long line of school shootings in the United States, where guns outnumber people and attempts to restrict access to firearms face perennial political deadlock.

Underlining the commonplace nature of mass shootings, the police chief said some medical personnel responding to Abundant Life came directly from training for such an event.

“I think we can all agree that enough is enough,” Barnes told reporters.

“We have to come together to do everything we can to support our students, to prevent press conferences like these from happening again and again and again.”

US President Joe Biden condemned the shooting as “shocking and unconscionable” and said the tragedy underscored yet again the need for tighter gun laws.

“It is unacceptable that we are unable to protect our children from this scourge of gun violence. We cannot continue to accept it as normal,” he said in a statement.

“We need Congress to act. Now.”

Horror of school shootings

Female US school shooters are exceedingly rare, but women and schoolgirls have been identified as assailants over the years.

“Most school shooters are male and in their teens or early 20s. However, over the last 50 years, at least four planned school shootings have involved female attackers,” David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, wrote last year.

The shooting happened in the final week of classes before students head to Christmas holidays, said Barbara Wiers, the school’s director of elementary and school relations.

“This has obviously rocked our school community,” she told a media briefing, saying it was not yet decided if students would return before the year-end break.

This year, there have been at least 487 mass shootings — defined as a shooting involving at least four victims, dead or wounded — across the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

At least 16,012 people have been killed in firearms violence in the United States this year, not including suicides, GVA reported Monday.

In September a 14-year-old boy killed four people, including two students, at a high school in the state of Georgia, before being taken into custody.

Nineteen students and two teachers were shot dead in May 2022 when an 18-year-old gunman stormed their Uvalde, Texas elementary school and opened fire. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)