Madison police announced Monday that three people were dead at a Christian school in the area after a shooter opened fire in a classroom around 11 a.m. local time.
The police department initially set the death toll at five during a press briefing, but then corrected that announcement in a Facebook post.
Multiple others from the Abundant Life Christian School community are injured, according to Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes, who met with reporters about an hour after law enforcement was called to the scene.
“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,” NBC News reported.
President Joe Biden described the shooting as “shocking and unconscionable” and called for Congress to take action on gun violence in a statement.
“Every child deserves to feel safe in their classroom. Students across our country should be learning how to read and write — not having to learn how to duck and cover,” Biden said. “We can never accept senseless violence that traumatizes children, their families, and tears entire communities apart.”
The suspected shooter was a 15-year-old student at the school. The suspect died on the way to the hospital after emergency personnel arrived on campus of what’s believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
At a second press briefing Monday afternoon, the Madison Police Department announced that a teacher and teenaged student died in the Wisconsin school shooting.
“At least two other students are in critical condition and four others are recovering from injuries that are not life threatening,” NBC News reported.
Barnes said Monday evening that police have searched the alleged shooter’s house and spoken with family members. They have not yet determined the motive.
He also said during the evening briefing that a second grader at Abundant Life Christian School called 911 to ask for help Monday morning.
On Tuesday, the Madison Police Department corrected that statement, saying that it was a second grade teacher who contacted the police.
School shooting in Wisconsin
Abundant Life Christian School is located on the west side of Madison.
It serves around 330 students, who come from “about 200 families representing more than 50 local congregations,” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Barnes and other Wisconsin leaders have called for Americans to keep members of the school community in their prayers.
“Today is a sad, sad, day,” Barnes said. “Not just for Madison, but for our entire country.”
Shooting at Feather River School
The small, Christian school in Wisconsin is the latest in a string of faith-based schools to become the site of a mass shooting.
Earlier this month, a small Seventh-Day Adventist school in northern California was targeted by a shooter. The gunman died at the scene after critically injuring two kindergarten students, according to The Associated Press.
A second AP article reported that the shooter may have zeroed in on Feather River School because of its religious affiliation. He was believed to have been motivated by anger over ongoing violence in the Middle East.
“How it was that he conflated what’s going on in Palestine and Yemen with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, I can’t speculate. I’m not sure that we’ll ever know that,” Butte County Sheriff Kory L. Honea said after the Dec. 4 shooting, per the AP.
The Feather River shooting followed a major March 2023 shooting at a Christian school serving around 200 students in the Nashville area. Three students — all age 9 — and three adults died in the school shooting at the Covenant School, as the Deseret News reported at the time.