Wisconsin dad charged in school shooting is latest parent accused in gun violence
May 9, 2025, 9:47 AM
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, left, and Acting Police Chief John Patterson appear during a press conference to announce the arrest of Jeffrey Rupnow in Madison, Wis. Thursday, May 8, 2025. (John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
(John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)
A Wisconsin man charged with crimes for a school shooting committed by his daughter is the latest U.S. parent taken to court for violence caused by a child.
Prosecutors have extended responsibility beyond shooters if they believe there is evidence that a parent contributed to the violence.
The charges against Jeffrey Rupnow include intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 causing death. In December, his daughter, Natalie Rupnow, 15, killed a student and a teacher at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, and killed herself.
Rupnow was due to appear in court Friday.
A look at other cases:
Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first U.S. parents held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by a child. They are serving 10-year prison terms for involuntary manslaughter.
Their son, Ethan Crumbley, killed four students and wounded others at Michigan’s Oxford High School in 2021. The school revealed his violent drawings to the Crumbleys a few hours before the shooting, but they declined to take him home. No one checked his heavy backpack for a gun.
The Crumbleys were not aware of their son’s plans, but they had given a gun as a gift a few days earlier. Prosecutors said Ethan’s actions were foreseeable and that the Crumbleys had failed to prevent the violence.
Robert Crimo Jr. pleaded guilty to misdemeanors for endorsing his son’s Illinois gun permit in 2019 despite knowing that Robert Crimo III had expressed suicidal thoughts.
Three years later, Crimo III killed seven people at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, a suburb north of Chicago.
鈥淗e was criminally reckless the moment he submitted that affidavit,鈥� prosecutor Eric Rinehart said of the father.
Crimo Jr. was sentenced to 60 days in jail. His son is serving a life prison sentence after pleading guilty in March to murder.
In Georgia, Colin Gray is awaiting trial on charges of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for the deaths of two students and two teachers last year at Apalachee High School in Winder.
Gray gave his son, Colt Gray, an assault-style firearm as a gift and was aware that the child鈥檚 mental health had deteriorated, investigators said.
Colt Gray had a shrine above his home computer for the gunman in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school massacre, according to prosecutors.
Colin Gray has pleaded not guilty. In a separate case, his son has pleaded not guilty to murder charges.
Deja Taylor was prosecuted in state and federal court after her 6-year-old son took her gun to school and wounded a teacher in a classroom full of students in Newport News, Virginia, in 2023.
Taylor was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for a drug-related crime connected to possessing a gun. Separately, she was sentenced to two years in state prison for child neglect.
鈥淭hat is my son, so I am, as a parent, obviously willing to take responsibility for him because he can鈥檛 take responsibility for himself,鈥� Taylor told 鈥淕ood Morning America鈥� in 2023.
The teacher, Abigail Zwerner, told a judge she wasn’t sure 鈥渨hether it would be my final moment on Earth.鈥�
