The year is almost over, and as we start to move toward Christmas, it’s the time of year when losing someone hurts that much worse than it normally does. I, unfortunately, have more experience with that than I’d like.
It’s a good way to suck the joy out of the holidays.
In Madison, Wisconsin, though, at least two families have it far worse than I ever figured I did.
At least three people were killed and several others were injured when a shooter opened fire on Monday at a private Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, law enforcement said.
The shooting was reported in the morning hours at Abundant Life Christian School, a kindergarten through 12th grade school with approximately 200 families.
“Today is a sad, sad, day,” Madison Police Chief Barnes said. “Not just for Madison, but for our entire country.”
Here’s what we know about the shooting so far, including details released by police, background on the school and reaction from officials:
What happened?
A student at the school killed two victims and injured six others in the final week before Christmas break. The shooter also died.
Officers found multiple gunshot wound victims after responding to an active shooter call at the school at 10:57 a.m., including an unidentified juvenile who Barnes said could be the shooter. No officers fired their weapons during the incident.
Police said five people were killed, but later updated the figure to reflect three people died, including the shooter.
Police report that the killer used a 9 mm pistol of some description.
As to the killer’s motives, that hasn’t been determined, at least so far as the media has been made aware. That’s unsurprising, in part because these kinds of things rarely have any obvious motive, at least at these early stages.
Regardless of the age of the killer–the school teaches kindergarten through 12th grade–there’s no way the shooter could have lawfully purchased a firearm. That means he got it via some other means. What those were is unknown at this time.
As for the victims, there’s not a lot of information out there about the deceased, other than the killer appears to be one of them–I refuse to say “three dead” in a shooting like this when one was the jackwagon who kicked the whole thing off. As for the wounded, the injuries reportedly “range from minor to life-threatening.”
That unfortunately means the death toll may well rise as things progress.
Also, keep in mind that this just happened a few hours ago, really. That means what we know now could well change and we’ll “know” something completely different in an hour or so.
According to The Violence Project, there have been three mass shootings this year.
TVP defines a mass shooting as four or more people killed excluding the shooter in an event that does not include some other kind of criminal activity. Because of the death toll as it stands, this would not be counted among those numbers, though other databases will count it based on their own definition.
Let’s keep the families of the dead in our prayers, as well as those who were injured. May this not meet any more definitions of a mass shooting and may all those injured make a full recovery.
We will continue to monitor this story.
Read the full article here
