Let’s be real for a second. The shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, WI is far from the kind of headline-making event we’re used to seeing. Yes, seven were injured, but only two killed–plus the killer, of course–and we aren’t exactly in the realm of something like Parkland, Uvalde, or Virginia Tech by any stretch of the imagination.
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But it’s also been a quiet year on that front, all things considered, and so it’s getting a lot of attention.
That and the fact that this case just keeps getting weirder.
Let’s start with something relatively benign, and that’s how initial reporters were a tad wrong. The killer didn’t have a handgun. She had two.
The 15-year-old girl who fatally shot two people and wounded several others at a Wisconsin Christian school had two guns on her at the time of the attack, authorities revealed Wednesday.
[Killer’s name redacted so as to not contribute to making her famous] had two handguns when she opened fire at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison Monday morning, killing substitute teacher Erin West and freshman Rubi Vergara, Police Chief Shon Barnes said, noting the girl’s motive remains unclear.
“I do not know if she planned it that day or if she planned it a week prior,” Barnes said. “To me, bringing a gun to school to hurt people is planning. And so we don’t know what the premeditation is.”
Well, ain’t that a case of “no sh**, Sherlock.”
Of course there was planning involved. There have been a couple of mass shootings–or attempted mass shootings–that were spur-of-the-moment things, but most of them are planned. There’s almost always premeditation, and I suspect there was a certain degree of it in some of those supposedly spontaneous mass murders.
Barnes declined to say who purchased the guns, citing that this is an ongoing investigation, but that suggests he knows.
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Now, Wisconsin has a mandatory storage law, so if one of the parents didn’t have their own guns properly secured, there likely would have been an arrest on that front already. That may still be coming, but it’s an interesting data point.
So where did she get her guns? Plural.
That remains to be seen.
However, that’s not the strangest thing. See, while neither of her parents has been arrested for failing to secure their guns or anything like that, there has been at least one interesting twist…in California.
The 15-year-old girl who allegedly carried out a mass shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, had reportedly been in contact with a 20-year-old man from California who was allegedly planning a separate mass attack on a government building.
The authorities are currently investigating [killer’s name redacted] motive for opening fire at the school on Monday, killing a teacher and student while injuring six others. [She] is believed to have turned the gun on herself after carrying out the school shooting in Wisconsin. Now, investigators are looking into her relationship with Alexander Charles Paffendorf, a 20-year-old man from Carlsbad, California.
The authorities confirmed that the alleged conversations between [the killer] and Paffendorf included discussions on his intention to target a government building with explosives.
“During an FBI interview, Paffendorf admitted to the FBI agents that he had told Rupnow that he would arm himself with explosives and a gun and that he would target a government building,” CBS News reported. Investigators are still piecing together how the two individuals began speaking.
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The FBI sought a red flag order on Paffendorf and raided his home looking for firearms, though there’s been no mention of whether there were any.
Honestly, this is wild. Currently, it’s unknown if Paffendorf is facing arrest or not.
While authorities are trying to figure out how the two are connected, I’m left very concerned about how many other potential mass killers are out there communicating and potentially coordinating. I mean, is there a Match.com for mall killer-wannabes? What are the odds that two people who are planning mass murders just happen to stumble upon one another and strike up a chat about killing a pile of people?
How does a conversation like that even start?
Now, it’s entirely possible that Paffendorf was just talking smack on the internet and thought the killer was too. Still, this is a strange turn of events, to say the least, and it’ll be interesting to see things proceed from here.
