More details are emerging about a shooting at UW-Platteville Monday which left two students dead. In a statement released Tuesday, the university said the UW-Platteville Police Department had responded to a call at Wilgus Hall, a student residence hall, for a “disturbance.” When officers arrived, they found two individuals with gunshot wounds.
One of the individuals police found on the scene has been identified as 22-year-old Kelsie Martin, who was transported to Southwest Health and then med-flighted to UW Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Martin was the Wilgus Hall Assistant Resident Director and a psychology major from Beloit, the university said in an update.
The other individual was identified as Hallie Helms, also 22 years old. Helms died on the scene, and preliminary autopsy findings indicate that Helms may have died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Helms was a Wilgus Hall resident, and an elementary education major from Baraboo.
Final exams for the remainder of the week have been cancelled. Students with any questions are encouraged to reach out to the dean’s office for their individual college. Students are encouraged to reach out to counseling resources. University counseling will be offering walk-in urgent sessions Wednesday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and toll free counseling can be reached at 844-602-6680 or 720-272-0004.
University officials and law enforcement have been tight-lipped about the incident, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. A shelter-in-place order was issued as a large police presence gathered on the campus Monday. The order lasted for about an hour until 5 p.m. Gov. Tony Evers said he was being briefed on the situation and will remain in close contact with university officials.
UW-Platteville enrolls around 5,800 students, with Wilgus Hall, one of 10 residence buildings, housing 230 students , according to the university’s website. Over 2,800 students live on campus. The shooting occurred at the end of the spring semester and on the first day of final exams.
Some students reported seeing ambulances on scene. One student, 24-year-old Amanda Sawatzki, reportedly heard the voices of two people arguing in the afternoon, and then later heard a loud bang while she was working on a senior seminar paper.
At a 7 p.m. press conference on Monday, UW-Platteville Police Chief Joseph Hallman wouldn’t confirm whether a shooting had occurred, or whether there had been any injuries. Hallman and university officials called it an isolated incident, and said it is being actively investigated by police.
Bail has been set for Jeffrey Rupnow at $20,000 cash after he was charged criminally in connection with the shooting carried out by his daughter at Madison's Abundant Life Christian School.
Madison Police Acting Chief John Patterson speaks at a press conference Thursday about the arrest of Jeffrey Rupnow on charges that he illegally gave his daughter two handguns, including one that she used in the school shooting Dec. 16 at a Madison private school. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
The father of the teenager who shot and killed two people at a Madison private school and took her own life five months ago was arrested Thursday and charged with three felony counts in connection with the December shootings.
Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, was charged with two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a person under the age of 18 and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. All are Class H felonies under Wisconsin law, subject to a fine of up to $10,000 or a prison sentence of up to six years, or both.
Rupnow was booked into the Dane County jail just before 5:30 a.m. Thursday, according to the jail’s online records.
He is the father of Natalie Rupnow, the 15-year-old student at Abundant Life Christian School on Madison’s east side who entered the school in the middle of the morning on Dec. 16, 2024,shot and killed a teacher and a student, wounded six other people and then took her own life, all within a matter of minutes.
According to the criminal complaint, which was unsealed Thursday after Rupnow’s early morning arrest, Rupnow purchased two guns for his daughter: a 22-caliber handgun and later a Glock 9 mm pistol — the weapon that was used in the shooting. He said Natalie helped pay for the Glock and he purchased it for her from a gun store, the complaint states.
“All of these weapons, including [a third] one that was about to be gifted to the same teen, were purchased legally,” Madison Police Department Acting Chief John Patterson said at a Thursday afternoon press conference.
“There was a gun safe in the home. Based on our investigation, it did not stop the teenager from having regular access” to the contents, he said.
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the case “is a call and an action to hold parents accountable … if their children can access their firearms.”
Rhodes-Conway said she wanted to see the Legislature take up “a number of really common sense proposals that have been around for years” to reduce gun violence. Those include measures such as universal background checks before people can purchase a gun as well as “red flag” laws that empower the courts to remove guns from owners who may represent a credible threat to others.
“The other piece of this is really making sure that responsible gun owners are doing everything they can to make sure that those guns do not fall into the hands of people who should not have them,” she said.
Patterson said Rupnow has been cooperative with police throughout the investigation.
In interviews with police, Natalie’s parents as well as two friends described her behavior as depressed and sometimes angry at her parents, who are divorced.
“Why would a 15-year-old open fire in her school and murder a teacher, classmates, and injure six others? We may never fully understand that horror,” Patterson said. “We do know the teenager had a fascination with weapons and school shootings.”
The complaint states that in June 2022 Madison police officers told Jeffrey Rupnow “of high-risk behavior that [Natalie] was engaging in via the internet.” The complaint does not elaborate further on that report. “I can’t speak further to the follow-up that was done” at that time, Patterson said.
Patterson said the investigation remains open in the case. He declined to comment about reports that people in other states were in touch with Natalie Rupnow online.
According to the complaint, Jeffrey Rupnow told police he had 11 guns, including two that were considered Natalie’s. He told police his daughter became interested in guns after he took her to a friend’s farm to shoot guns about two years ago and that they would occasionally go to a shooting range.
Because of her interest, Rupnow told police he bought her a 22-caliber handgun and later the Glock, according to the complaint.
The complaint states that Rupnow described occasional comments by his daughter about wanting to kill herself, but that he generally viewed those remarks as attention-seeking behavior.
Rupnow told police he had a gun safe where he kept all of the guns, including those he had purchased for his daughter. The safe was locked with a security code. He told police he had not told his daughter the code itself, but that he had told her that it was his Social Security number backwards, in case she needed to get into it.
The complaint states that police found maps of the school and a cardboard mockup that appeared to be of the school building among Natalie Rupnow’s things at home.
Police also found notebooks and what Patterson called a “manifesto” — a six-page document titled “War Against Humanity.” That and other documents suggested a fascination with other mass shootings, including one in 2007 by an 18-year-old in Finland, which she noted in one of her writings took place two years after she was born.
In addition, police found and reviewed 30 sets of camcorder videos, some of them with Natalie handling weapons and some depicting what appeared to be animal mutilation, according to the complaint.
According to the complaint, Natalie took both of her handguns to the school on Dec. 16, the day of the shooting, but apparently used only the Glock.
The complaint states she arrived at the school just before 10:40 a.m. and entered a classroom just before 10:50 a.m.
A student in the classroom, a study hall, told police that once in the classroom, Natalie held the gun with both hands and aimed it at the teacher who was sitting at her desk in the front of the room. The student said he heard gunshots and ran to the back of the room, where he hid behind a beanbag chair.
After the shooting stopped, the student, who was wounded in the leg, saw Natalie Rupnow lying on the floor on her back, with the gun in her hand. The student told police he removed the gun from her hand and put it in a drawer “because he wanted to make sure that no one else got a hold of it,” the complaint states. The police later retrieved the gun from the drawer.
The teacher, Erin Michelle West, and one student, Rubi Bergara, were both killed, according to the Dane County Medical Examiner’s office. Six other students were wounded. One remains hospitalized, Patterson said.
As the school year draws to a close, parents and educators are reflecting on how the tragedy at Abundant Life Christian School has altered the Madison community. They're also having more conversations about how to keep kids safe at school — and at home.
As both a survivor and advocate on the issue, Natalie Hayden knows how guns can turn a domestic violence situation from dangerous to deadly.
“Having that weapon just really elevates things and makes it more lethal for both parties involved,” said Hayden, co-founder of ExPOSED Inc., a nonprofit that works to empower youths and foster healthy relationships.
They’re the type of tragedies, ones that involve guns in the hands of domestic abusers, that lawmakers hope to help prevent in the future. The plan is to reintroduce legislation this year to keep individuals convicted of domestic violence offenses from possessing firearms in Wisconsin.
State Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, who co-authored similar legislation that failed to pass last year, said the goal is to align Wisconsin law with a federal law that keeps guns out of the hands of convicted domestic offenders.
If passed this go-round, the legislation would change the state’s disorderly conduct statute to separate violent conduct from other types of disorderly conduct.
It also would alter the statute defining domestic abuse so that court records indicate the exact nature of the relationship between those involved. Together, they would close the loophole that allows domestic violence offenders in Wisconsin from possessing guns.
Impact of firearms on domestic violence situations
Jenna Gormal, public policy director for End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, said that women are five times more likely to be killed when an abuser has access to a gun and that domestic violence assaults involving a gun are 12 times more likely to result in death.
Firearms were used in 66 of 85 domestic violence homicides in Wisconsin in 2023, Gormal said.
Domestic-violence-related charges are often present before a domestic violence homicide occurs, Gormal said.
“That tells us that people that are convicted of domestic violence offenses are more likely to commit homicide,” she said.
Hayden said guns create a high-risk situation for everyone involved in a domestic violence situation. Sometimes, she said, victims will purchase their own firearm to protect themselves from an abuser who also has one.
Guns also create a situation that is harder for a victim to escape from, she said.
“There is a weapon involved and I don’t feel safe, but maybe I have to stick around for the safety of my kids,” Hayden said.
Having a firearm present also can result in an abuser making a fatal decision once his partner decides to leave, she said.
“People can resort to extreme violence once they feel like they’ve lost that control,” Hayden said.
Some support for change
Gov. Tony Evers said keeping firearms from domestic abusers was a priority of his administration during his State of the State address in January. The city of Milwaukee passed a resolution in late 2023 in support of a change in state law that prevents domestic abusers from possessing guns.
Gormal said that legislation preventing domestic abusers from possessing firearms is a common sense, not a partisan, issue.
Roys said it’s an issue that everyone should care about but blames the gun lobby and Republican leaders for prioritizing politics over the safety of victims.
“The public overwhelmingly wants gun safety laws much broader than we have right now,” she said. “My hope is that they will finally start to prioritize women and kids who are being victimized.”
Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, center, listens to Gov. Tony Evers’ 2025 state budget address Feb. 18, 2025, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
NNS reached out to Rep. Bob Donovan, a former Milwaukee alderman who now represents Greenfield in the state Assembly, and Rep. Jessie Rodriguez, both Republicans, for comment on the legislation. Neither responded.
Corey Graff, executive director of Wisconsin Gun Owners Inc., a gun rights organization, said the type of legislation Roys and others are pushing for would only impact law-abiding gun owners.
“Someone who is interested in committing an assault and potential murder against the victim is not going to follow any firearms laws,” Graff said. “Across the board, this is a homogenous attack on liberty and doesn’t address the crime of domestic violence.”
Graff said the legislation would also create a false sense of security for victims.
“They might assume that their attacker will follow the law, but that’s a false premise,” he said.
Tips for survivors
All situations are different, Hayden said, and women ultimately must decide for themselves what is best for them and their family. But there are some strategic things they can do to help them be safer, she said.
“Let people know of your whereabouts. Bring people into the fold that you trust,” Hayden said.
Sometimes, she said, victims are not ready or even able to leave because of certain circumstances, but they can start thinking of a plan while they wait.
“You can look for a shelter, and if something happens, you can file the necessary paperwork,” she said. “It’s always good to document what happens if you get to the other side and it gets to the courts.”
Overall, she said, the system needs to improve if we are going to protect people from being victimized by domestic violence.
“We need the nets to be there to catch us when we are ready. We need to bring awareness to our young people so that they can be safe, and we need to keep guns from people who could use them to bring harm,” Hayden said.
Republicans in the Legislature put a referendum on the April 1 ballot to add the requirement to the state constitution. State Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, said the amendment makes it “harder to vote” than to buy a gun.
In Wisconsin, federally licensed gun dealers are required to do background checks on gun purchasers, but other sellers, such as individuals selling privately or at gun shows, are not.
According to a 2015 national survey of gun owners, 22% who made their most recent purchase within two years said they did so without a background check; the figure was 57% among gun owners in states such as Wisconsin that didn’t regulate private gun sales.
It’s the latest national survey, said Johns Hopkins University gun policy expert Daniel Webster.
On voter ID, a University of Wisconsin-Madison study estimated Wisconsin’s law prevented 4,000-11,000 Milwaukee and Dane county residents from voting in the 2016 presidential election.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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