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unless I egg art. And then we'll take questions after that. All right.
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This is the part where, again, I would normally start by saying good afternoon and thanking
you for being here, but under these circumstances, I'll just give you a minute to start your
live streams or do whatever you need to do.
And while you're doing that, my name is Chief Sean Barnes, S-H-O-N-B-A-R-N-E-S.
I'm currently the Chief of Police for the Madison Police Department.
I'll be providing a brief update of the school shooting that we had today in Madison.
There are some information that we're not going to release because it's still an ever-evolving
situation.
You're here from some of our representatives from our city and from our county, and behind
me are a lot of people who came together today to make sure that the day ended well
and then everyone else was safe.
So if that being said, I'll go ahead and start my remarks.
Today truly is a sad day for Madison and for our country.
It is a day that I believe will live in our collective minds for a very, very long time.
Here are the details today at 10.57 a.m.
Our team was called to the Abundant Life Christian School in reference to an active
shooter.
We know that three people are dead, including the suspect shooter.
We know that the suspect shooter was a teenage student who attended the school.
At this time, we're not releasing the age or gender of the student or any other identifying
remarks about the student.
Two other people have died that died were a teacher and a teenage student.
Six other people were injured.
Two students are now in critical condition in the hospital, and these injuries are considered
life-threatening injuries.
Four students are also at other area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries.
These are just the physical injuries that we know about.
We know that this was the middle of the day, of a school day, and so there will be other
injuries that we'll have to face for a very, very long time, and we're going to do everything
we can as a community to heal those injuries as well.
Many of you have asked me about the why of this.
Why did this happen?
What do we know?
What was the motivation?
I do not know.
And I will tell you this.
Our detectives are working hard in an investigative process to find out as many answers as we
can so that we can further prevent these things from happening, not only in this community
but in other communities around our country.
I think we can all agree that enough is enough, and we have to come together to do everything
we can to support our students, to prevent press conferences like these from happening
again and again and again.
The school building itself is clear.
We have cleared the school.
There's no other threats or danger to the community.
We're in the process now of what we call reunification, and what that simply means is
making sure that every student that was in the school is present and accounted for
and returned to their loved ones.
This usually takes a while, but we have practiced, unfortunately, and practice and practice,
and that's why we're able to reunify students with their parents within hours of a school
shooting.
The reunification is taking place at the Dean Clinic on Stoughton Road, and I certainly
thank them for their help.
Again we need our public to find an alternate route.
If that is your normal way home, as we get closer to the end of the day, please be patient
or find another route home.
We're currently processing the scene.
We're interviewing those who may have been witnesses, and we're obtaining search warrants
to get additional information.
And lastly, I want to just say thank you to everyone who's standing behind me, the
organizations and agencies that they represent, the men and women of the Madison Police Department
and Dane County Sheriff's Office, who selflessly ran into a building not knowing what they
were going to encounter.
Many of you know this about me, but I started my professional career, if you will, as a
public school teacher back in 1997.
And I taught public school for four years, it was one of the greatest joys of my life
before becoming a police officer.
And I can tell you what a special place our schools are.
With that being said, we owe it to our community to do everything possible to ensure that it's
not only a special place, but a safe place as well, and we're going to continue to do
that.
We ask for your patience as information is coming in.
We will do the best that we can to bring you accurate and timely information, but we want
to make sure that our public knows that we're working extremely hard on this particular
incident.
There are a lot of people involved, and certainly we're going to come together as a community.
I like to bring up, at this time, police fire chief Chris Carman.
Thank you, chief Barnes.
Before I start, the only thing I can say is this is not a place that any fire chief or
any one of us would ever want to be.
And I can't believe I'm standing here today talking about this incident.
The fire department is a part of this community, much like all the folks standing up here
with me today.
Our hearts are with, and our arms are around, everybody impacted today, and everybody within
our community.
With that, I won't repeat the details shared by chief Barnes, but I will share with you
the fire department activity for today.
Much like chief Barnes mentioned at 1057, we were also dispatched with engine five and
medic five to the same location.
Throughout the course of the incident, we responded with five engine companies, four
ladder companies, 15 ambulances.
I would like to take a moment and share our gratitude for our county partners throughout
a multitude of EMS and fire agencies that joined us in the response today.
We all said 11 off-duty chief officers that came in on this response, so it was a tremendous
response from the fire department.
We transported four patients to St. Mary's.
We transported three patients to the University of Wisconsin hospitals.
On the arrival of our crews, I can say my gratitude to our membership for what they
did and their selfless actions today.
It's hard for me to place into words what they ran into as well.
They did that immediately.
They did that selflessly, and within a course of 15 minutes from the first transport to
the last transport, all the patients were on their way to the hospital.
So to our membership within the Madison fire department and within all the emergency services,
my gratitude, my recognition of the work that goes into this, the training that went
into this, that again, we had hoped we would never have to put into practice.
One more time on behalf of the Madison fire department.
Our hearts are with you, our arms are around you, and we will be with you throughout the
duration of this.
So at this point, I will step aside, turn it over to the mayor.
Thank you, chief, both of you.
This is an incredibly sad day for our community.
As you've heard, there is no danger to the community at this time, but our entire community
has been impacted by this tragic incident.
On behalf of the common council and the city of Madison staff, I want to offer our heartfelt
condolences to the victims and families and to the whole abundant life community.
Our focus now is on supporting them and supporting the victims and their families.
And we will continue to do that through the coming days and weeks.
I also want to thank our first responders, the police, fire, the medical staff for their
quick action and their life-saving efforts.
As you've heard already, this is a whole of government response.
It is not just police and fire.
It is not just city of Madison.
We have folks from all around the county.
We have folks from multiple agencies engaged in both the initial immediate response and
the ongoing support and will be engaged for days and weeks to come.
I also want to thank the White House and the governor and others in the federal government
and state government for reaching out to offer their support and help.
We will be drawing on resources as needed going forward.
But the most important thing right now is to make sure that we are centering the victims
and their families and that we are doing whatever we can to support them and to help them heal
and to lift our entire community up through this difficult incident.
I am on record that I think we need to do better in our country and our community to
prevent gun violence.
And I hope that this day would never come in Madison.
It is not something that any mayor, any fire chief, any police chief, any person in public
office ever wants to have to deal with.
And so I will ask our entire community and our entire country to do whatever we can to
make sure that no public official ever has to stand in this position again.
And now I will invite the county executive to the podium.
Good afternoon everyone.
Today our community is reeling from the harp rehaying and senseless tragedies at Abundant
Life Christian School of Madison.
As a mom who received a text from her son at a high school here in the city of Madison
wondering if he was safe, I can tell you this hits you in the gut.
Our community is better than this.
Our country is better than this.
Cannot continue.
My heart goes out to the victims and their families and the students and the educators
and the list goes on and on.
One of us is affected by this unimaginable and unacceptable violence that has hit our
community today.
Dane County stands united in grief with the Abundant Life Christian School community.
The sheriff's department, the Department of Emergency Management, Department of Human
Services have all been on the front lines.
My phone has been ringing from people across our state and our nation asking what it is
that they can do to help our community.
And right now it is our time to be committed to supporting this school, these students
and these families and our first responders who went into that building during this devastating
time.
We must work closely with our law enforcement officers and first responders, mental health
professionals, community leaders and policymakers to ensure that we are taking care of one another.
No community should ever have to ensure endure such a tragedy.
And my administration is going to do everything that it can to provide assistance to those
who have experienced this devastating loss and also do everything that we can to prevent
such tragedy from occurring.
To all of those who are grieving in our community, please know that you're not alone.
Dane County stands with you.
We're here to support you in any way possible.
Please reach out and ask for help.
The governor's office as well as the mayor's office and I will continue to update the public
as we learn more.
But please understand there are many things that we cannot share with you right now.
This is an active investigation.
This is an active case.
The SSM Health Clinic near the intersection of Buckeye Road and Stone Road is the reunification
center.
I know that that has been out.
But we need to make sure that folks know where it is that they can go to be reunited
with their children.
Again, in the coming days, we are going to make sure that we are supporting those that
have been most impacted by this.
But folks, reach out, ask for help.
This does not need to be the reality of our community.
Thank you.
All right.
Let's start over here with questions.
How did this unfold?
Give us a bit of a timeline on how you rockin' your setting in the building.
Sure.
We received a call at approximately 10.57 a.m.
Someone from the school called 911 to report that there was an active shooter.
That means something different to us, obviously.
There's different protocols that go out, tone alerts even, so that even if officers are
busy doing other things, they respond.
One of the things that I do want to note is that our training center is about three
miles from there.
We have special event team medics.
Those that have worked with the fire department responded to this particular scene from their
training day.
So what began as a training day became an actual day.
And so that's how this call originally came in.
Nicholas, is there a question?
What can you tell us if anything more about this shooter or not what their motivations
were or have you made contact with their family members, anything updated on that?
Sure.
That's nothing new that I can tell you about the shooter at this time.
Again, as difficult as today is, that's still someone's child that's gone, that's still
someone that has to deal with what happened today.
And so we want to make sure that we can ensure as much cooperation as we can.
You asked me about why, as I stated before, I don't know why.
And I felt like if we did know why, we could stop these things from happening.
But what I will tell you is, as soon as we are done with the investigation, any information
that we uncover that will not compromise the safety of anyone involved or compromise the
confidentiality of any of these children that are involved will tell you.
I just asked for your patience.
We know it was a handgun.
We know a handgun was recovered.
We know it was confined to one space.
I don't do not know if it was a classroom or a hallway.
One of the things that we've gotten very good at, certainly different from in my day, is
that if you do not need to be in a crime scene, you do not need to go to a crime scene.
And so the crime scene and those persons who were involved, they have that crime scene
locked down, did not go or enter into that crime scene.
But if you can imagine, most schools, the students go together, but they are segregated.
So on each different floor in each different group.
And so there's no evidence that anyone else was injured that was not in the age group.
What can you say at this time about how schools that responded when the training started?
I cannot speak to how the school staff responded.
You know, we did have injuries, but it could have always, of course, had additional injuries.
I do not know what the school's protocols are.
Again, this is a private Christian school.
I know that we have a very good rapport with MMSD, Madison Metropolitan Schools, Public
Schools.
So we have done trainings for them before, but I would assume that most of the teachers
have the same or some similar type of training as a part of their certification.
There's some conflicting reports online about how many students are enrolled at the school.
Can you confirm approximately how many students attend the school?
I do not know how many students attend the school, but their website says that they serve
about 200 families.
Right in the back of the white, what kind of support systems are you going to make available
to people who are assigned to the right?
That's a good question.
As you heard from our mayor and our counter exec, we have services within our government
that will be made available to them.
I have a lot of confidence that they're going to follow through on that, and we'll make
sure that that person's who need to.
Do you guys want to speak to that?
Dean County Human Services, as well as the Red Cross and other consolidated agencies
are already on the scene, and we will continue to be on the scene, and those resources will
be bolstered again.
Please reach out.
You are not alone.
We are going to navigate this together, and there are people who are affected by this
trauma, who are not in the reunification center or at the school.
We need folks to be reaching out because we do have resources available.
Did you know if a London Christian Life School did they have a school resource officer report?
It's not my knowledge that they had a school resource officer that if they did, it would
have been a police officer, and I know where they all are, and they're not in the schools
right now.
In terms of witnesses that you mentioned about investigation, and what is that looking like?
Sure.
Are you guys speaking right?
Sure.
So the detectives will talk to anyone who may have seen this particular event unfold, anyone
that may have been unfortunate to hear something.
They will be talking to them.
It's my understanding that that's in process now, and everyone is cooperating fully.
That will give us an idea of not only what unfolded, but it could answer the question
to motivation, because again, the students who unfortunately had to witness this.
But that's not something that we want to rush.
We're not going to interrogate students.
We're going to give them an opportunity to come in and speak to what they may have saw
when they feel ready, which is why some of these questions can't be answered.
Right now.
How do you reassure the community that it's still okay to go back to school?
I mean, everybody's got kids, and I think, you know, maybe it happened in this school,
but there's everybody that's got to go anywhere, like this, and it's going to be hard.
Yeah.
I think you're asking me, how can I say 100% that no child will ever be harmed in school?
I can't.
No police chief can.
But all I can tell you is that we have systems in place, so that if something happens, we
can respond like we did today.
I can tell you that our mayor and our county exec has committed resources to not only public
health, but also mental health.
I can tell you that every teacher that I've ever had contact with at MMSD cares deeply
about their students, every staff member.
I talk to staff members all the time who tell me things that are going on in the schools
and want to do whatever they can, even if it's under anonymity, to let me know that they
want to have a safe school.
So my reassurance to the public is that if you see something, say something.
If you know someone who may be going through a difficult time, please reach out to someone.
And I think what I can do is make sure that our police department is transparent and open
and honest and inviting for people to call and give information.
I think MMSD does an excellent job of that.
And the same thing can be said for any other private school.
If you want to give information or you need someone to talk to, I can promise you, we'll
have someone there to get that information.
I understand that this private school you may not be as familiar with.
What can you tell us about some of the physical measures that are in place in the school,
whether it's mental detectives or entryway, can I run this?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I've never been in this school.
Unfortunately, I'm not aware that there were metal detectors in the school.
That's something that we can certainly look at.
Most schools have some form of surveillance or public space cameras, but that will be,
of course, part of the investigation process.
Can you clarify?
You said in seven or eight or six were hospitalized.
Does that mean one's been treated at least?
And secondly, is the shooter's family cooperating with the investigation?
Yeah, so that's two questions.
But let me try to handle the first one.
So I'm trying to go back to my notes.
So we do know that one person was pronounced at the scene.
And so that may be the seventh person, but we can get you all that information.
Just when we're done, I'll have my PIO, give that to you so you can report it accurately.
And what was your second question?
Is the shooter's family cooperating?
At this time, yes.
So you have any contact with the shooter's family?
We have.
And what were the steps taken to do that?
Through the investigative process, okay?
Yeah.
Is the shooter's home being searched without information about that?
Yes, obviously, once we have identified, we have initiated the search, but we think that
search is either ongoing now or that search may be concluded.
Of course, it's about safety.
That's the first thing, making sure that people are safe and then we'll go from there.
This has been an amazing day for everyone.
And so if you have someone who is deceased, who may have been a shooter, you want to make
sure that their family is okay, you don't know.
And so that is what we're doing right now.
It is about the safety of everyone.
This is going to be a long day for the Madison Police Department.
We just want a little, some of your patients.
Can the school have any prior threats and then just jumping off of that?
Do you have the shooter that had an environmental form?
We do not know that the shooter had any prior contact with law enforcement, but I did do
a check of the school.
There were some calls, but they were like 911 hang-ups, things of that nature.
There was nothing that suggested that the school was a place that violence would occur.
Chief, I know that you mentioned that the shooter died of a self-explicit drug.
Did that happen before officers arrived at the school or when the shooter saw officers
coming into the school?
Yeah, so let me say that the cause and manner in which the shooter died will be determined
by the inmate.
But what I can tell you is the shooter was dead upon our arrival, police department arrival,
and no officers fired their weapons, okay?
Because what are these search warrants you're executing or are they at the residence online
device to shoot your head?
I'm sorry.
Yeah, so the extent of the search warrant is to be able to go in a place that we don't
have permission to be in and make sure that everyone is okay.
And then if there's any evidence that we think we need to collect, we could only do
that with the use of a search warrant.
And so again, we have to determine if there is evidence that we will need.
Everyone wants to know what led up to this.
Are there any additional threats to public safety?
Was this person or was this person by themselves?
There are a lot of questions that we want to answer, but we have to answer the safety
questions first.
And then we'll move on to some of the more investigatory questions.
Are you in possession of any of the shooter's devices?
I am not.
No.
I'm wondering about the metal detectors you mentioned in the first meeting that you were
not a fan, but and if this school probably doesn't have them, do you know other schools
that do?
Do you think that that's something we should start talking about?
I guess the question is, would you want your child to go to a school with or without metal
detectors?
I can't answer that.
I can't.
Right now.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
So the idea is to create the safest environment that we can without metal detectors.
That is my answer.
Jesus was shooting at a Christian school right before the Christmas holiday, and you addressed
the impact of that.
And instead of Christmas all day at all and they're really related to it as a motivation
for sure.
Yeah.
So to again, to the question of motivation, we don't know why, but to the question of
so close to Christmas, we have a lot of people are going to be impacted.
If it's a Christian school, then obviously our holidays, our Christian holidays are
very important to the students.
Very important.
It's the time for family.
Students probably getting ready to go out on break.
And now the break will be a little less about celebrating Christmas than more about
celebrating perhaps friends and loved ones and staff members who perhaps lost their life.
That's why I'm asking everyone to of course keep abundant life.
Christian school in your thoughts and in your prayers and get a couple of more.
Okay.
Real quick.
Well, what I'm telling you is, is that in 1997, I began my professional career as a public
school teacher.
I taught history for four years before becoming a police officer, so I did not get far enough
to take courses in administration and budgeting of schools.
I don't know what governs private schools.
If they receive money where that comes from, that would probably be a question that you
would probably need to ask someone who's more intimately involved in the school system
and what their requirements are if they do receive that.
But you could probably compare what has happened or what goes on, their security measures
with the security measures of any school in MMSD and then that will may give you your
answer.
That's a very.
One very quick follow-up.
Okay.
As you know, there has been some criticism to other law departments in their response to
these school shooting incidents, particularly if you've already.
How did that inform your game plan today and how quickly were your officers getting to
the school?
What were they told to do?
We train on this as I spoke about earlier.
When officers arrive on the scene, they immediately go in, which we did in this case, stop the
threat, stop the killing, find the killer.
That's how we train and that's exactly what we did today.
There's no waiting, there's no coordination of who's in charge.
Everyone knows exactly what to do.
I spoke about this earlier.
We train on this constantly.
Our commanders, including the fire chief and I, was in a commander's training less than
two weeks ago going over this exact same scenario for another fictional location.
And so all of that came into play today and our officers performed extremely well based
on their training and based on the expectations that they know exactly what to do.
Stop the threat, stop the killing, find the threat.
Thank you all.
I think the questions have been asked and we're, we're, we're drained a little far from
what's most important at this point in time.
And that is the victims and their families of three things to add.
First of all, there is a lot that our community can and will do in the coming days to support
the victims and their families.
And we will have more information at future briefings.
If anyone, and I would urge you all to include this in your stories, if anyone needs mental
health support as a result of this incident and the coverage of it, I encourage them to
reach out to 988 by phone or text and to get the mental health support that they need.
It is incredibly important that we take care of our community in this very difficult time.
We all have a role in preventing gun violence.
Our entire community needs to be part of the solution here.
There are many things that we can do and we can have those conversations in coming days.
But first and foremost, what needs to be the priority for all of us is supporting our young
people.
And that is where our community's attention needs to turn at this point in time.
The police department, the fire department, the city, the county will share additional
information about the investigation as it becomes available.
But I urge you all to help our community find resources to support their mental health and
to find resources to support the victims and families at this time.
Thank you all.
Go to your updates.
What can you tell us?
It would be at the city of Massey.
I'm me, Stephanie, and Cynthia will stick around answering the other questions to both
of us.
Let me just say, before I go, because the mayor mentioned that this was a whole of government
response, it certainly was.
And there's so many people that we want to thank.
We cannot thank everyone, but it's also a whole of law enforcement response.
Even though we were in different agencies, we all have the same training.
And so I want to thank our partners with the FBI who are here with me today, partners with
the ATF, Dane County Emergency Management.
Of course, we already talked about our fire department.
We've got calls from the attorney general of the United States, Wisconsin State Patrol,
our governor's office, State Patrol, Monona, as well as our sheriff's office.
I know I may have left someone out, but thank you for how you responded professionally,
quickly, and according to the way that we all trained, and it all came together to ensure
that no other persons were hurt.
Thank you.
Can you just say who you were?
I just want to know that.
Thank you.
I just want to know that.
Oh, I'm the detective.
They are right.
They seem to be crazy.
They don't seem like a lot of time to be something.
Yeah.
So I will work on getting that information for our next media briefing.
We plan to meet here at 5.30 tonight, and I will work on getting that information.
Do you know how many sets of words were executed?
I don't have that information.
I can see the detectives are able to share that information.
Okay.
Thank you.