‘Was this you?’: Madison Christian school shooter identified by friends on Discord
A school shooting at a Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, killed three people, including the gunwoman.
According to Madison police, a teacher and student at Abundant Life Christian School were killed. The alleged shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Police have not officially identified the perpetrator, but in the immediate wake of the attack, several posters began interacting with an account on X.
The account, @postalbrained, shared an image of a person sitting in a restroom and holding their finger in an "OK" sign.
As seen in the post below, a second post followed up the image with a link to a Google Doc.
As news broke of the shooting, an account, @PETR0GRAD, replied to the post asking, "Sam, was this you?"
Another account quote tweeted the same @postalbrained account, offering a tribute to her.
"To everyone who is saying Lifestream it Do this Do that Or anything Go fuck yourself. Genuinely Samantha was one of the nicest most beautiful people in the world. She was perfect in every way But no People like you just had to ruin her life Make her feel hated," the account @severd_head wrote.
The people responding to the posts before a name had been identified appeared to be members of a Discord chat with the alleged gunwoman, where they say she shared a snippet of a manifesto.
"Sneak peek of it," read a post from the Discord account @braineddead, which friends said was the account of the alleged gunwoman.
"Women are the only hope for this wretched world," it begins. "Every single male must be wiped out."
While that screenshot has not been verified, other pages from an alleged manifesto have circulated.
The quote tweets of the account blew up on X, and the Discord members shared images of the alleged gunwoman, including one of her at a skeet shooting range.
That image matches a Facebook page of an adult who has the same last name as the one identified by the Discord group as the alleged gunwoman.
Although the Discord members used the name "Samantha," other reports indicate the gunwoman may have used that as a moniker online.
The unidentified channel's users also began replying to an influx of right-wing accounts claiming the alleged shooter was trans. According to them, she was a biological woman who seemed obsessed with violence.
Responded one of the Discord users when asked about her manifesto, "I knew she had school shooter leanings and posted about school shooters all the time so it's not like it's out of the blue, no I knew her online. Anyway this is surprising, usually people posting about this stuff are just LARPing but she was serious."
The comment appears to track with other images online. An avatar associated with the alleged Discord profile appears to be of a student shot at a desk.
A Tumblr account that uses the same user name as the Discord spoke repeatedly about the Columbine and Sandy Hook mass shootings.
"This is sad on so many levels," they wrote about a moment in which a bomb at Columbine planted by the shooters failed to explode.
A Spotify profile for the same name as the Discord user includes playlists like "Kill me wtf," "fuck you," and "Suicide."
Other reports indicate she used an image of the Columbine gunman for her profile picture on Cash App and had an active account on the site "Watch People Die."
The Daily Dot has not been able to confirm the deceased suspect's full name.
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