By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-12-18 21:12:33 | Updated at 2024-12-19 00:34:05
3 hours ago
The 15-year-old Wisconsin school shooter who killed two and injured six at her conservative Christian school had a dark past which appears to have included membership to a morbid site called “Watch People Die.”
But while police don’t yet have a motive for the shooting, which also saw Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow turn the gun on herself then die on the way to hospital, she was seemingly an aficionado of the twisted “Watch People Die” site, which disturbingly boasts it has over three million registered users.
The site includes graphic and upsetting images of people getting shot to death, run over, other school shooters and many international incidents like a 19-year-old man who died after getting caught in a meat grinder.
Rupnow, allegedly posting under the handle @Crossixir, is said to have written four months ago in response to one apparent suicide by hanging video: “Gotta be thinking of something while hanging himself.
When another posted asked her to explain more she apparently added: “I wonder what a lot people think before they die you know?
“Like just simply if it’s if they want to die at all or just nothing, or either perhaps just sex or just something stupid. Only thing I would bother to think of is just do it already if I was killing myself but depends on the situation. What would you think though?”
A month ago she posted a comment alongside a video of a man jumping through a window: “Fat version of Liam Payne,” referring to the One Direction singer who plunged to his death from a Buenos Aries hotel balcony in October.
Other video titles on the site include “suicidal man offs himself in front of cops” and “worker gets crushed trying to stop a forklift falling over.”
Rupnow — who brought a handgun to the Madison campus of the K-12 Abundant Life Christian School Monday and opened fire at around 11 a.m. inside a classroom during study hall — had a disturbing online presence including a morbid fascination with other high school shooters, according to social media profiles associated with her.
She fatally gunned down a teacher and a teenage student while pumping bullets into three other teenagers and a teacher, officials said.
In photos seen on her father Jeff’s Facebook page, Samantha can be seen wearing a T-shirt featuring a band favored by Columbine killer Eric Harris.
The photo shows her at a shooting range wearing the shirt from the German industrial band KMFDM.
Harris also wore one of the band’s T-shirts in public photos before he and Dylan Klebold went on to kill 13 people in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
The picture of Rupnow in the shirt fueled speculation she was inspired by the Columbine massacre.
The “Watch People Die” site appears to be run by a male who uses an explicit screen name.
“Hi! I hate this website and that’s really unfortunate, because I also run this website,” they write.
“Please consider logging off,” the site manager adds. “Watching the garbage here doesn’t improve your life in any way. Go read a book or something.”
The @Crossixir username had been banned by the site on Wednesday morning. The site lists “do not post anything illegal under US law” and, perhaps surprisingly, “do not post animal cruelty/abuse,” among its rules.
Rupnow’s school is a founding member of Impact Christian Schools, a cluster of Christian centers of higher learning in Wisconsin.
The group “believes God wants more” from education, according to their website.
Elementary and Schools Relations Director Barbara Wiers echoed the school’s beliefs at a press conference Monday.
“In spite of tragedy, God is working, and we believe that God is good in everything and that he turns beauty into ashes,” she said. “He is our foundation at Abundant Life Christian School. We exist to bring and to build the disciples of Jesus Christ so we have complete faith he will carry us through this.”
Attempts to reach the girl’s parents, Jeff and Mellissa Rupnow, were unsuccessful Tuesday.
