Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We are going to let you know if there is
an update provided by law enforcement in Madison, Wisconsin, we
are going to take you there live. We are paying
attention to that. Until then, we will give you the
information that we do know if you'd missed it. Earlier
this afternoon, about close to eleven o'clock Central time, that
police responded to reports of an active shooter. This was
(00:24):
at school called the Abundant Life Christian School, and they
identified what they are calling a juvenile deceased at the
scene who they thought was responsible for the shooting. Two
additional people were killed on top of the shooter who
was found dead. Six others transferred to a nearby hospital.
(00:44):
And we don't have a ton of information beyond that.
A lot of this has been kind of slowly trickling
over the last couple of hours, and essentially we're just
going to need to wait until they're ready to update
us on this about this because this is information that
we need to hear. Another school shooting, and when you
(01:04):
talk about school shootings under any circumstances, there is I
think we all can relate, like what if this was
a school that our kids go to? What if this
is a school that you know, is in our neighborhood.
You know, I don't think anybody who lives in the
Omaha area you're not all that far away from some
kind of school, specifically this one being a Christian school.
(01:27):
Was this a student of this school? We don't know yet.
Was this like where did the gun come from? Of course,
we don't know this, you know. I it's we struggle
to comprehend these things. And there are of course plenty
of people out there in the world that are going
(01:48):
to point immediately to guns. Is the perpetrator of this?
And you know, of course there are plenty of you know,
different situations where we could say that the acquiring the
acquisition of a firearm could be directly related to the
crime that we are attributing this to. At the same time, right,
(02:10):
I think it's more of a culture thing that we
have going on and how much we can maybe change
the way that we view the world, or our young
people view the world.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
How old was this person? You know, it's.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
You know, I was a juvenile who perpetrated the Georgia
school shooting earlier this year, And of course we talked
a lot about that and how the father of this
child certainly was on the hook at some point. Of course,
at the very beginning of twenty twenty four, there was
a shooting in Perry, Iowa, which is, you know, just
(02:46):
northwest of the Des Moines area, and that, I mean,
it just leaves you stunned that something like that could
happen that close by. And I think the closer it happens,
the more stunning. That is, this is Madison, Wisconsin instead
of Christian in school. Right and Sunday afternoon here in
the city of Omaha, there was a shooting that is
(03:08):
still under investigation. I don't have any additional information to
report other than what the newsroom was already talking about.
But there was a girl, young girl six years old,
who eventually died yesterday from a gunshot owned I like,
I don't know what precipitated that, and I don't know
who was involved. But and again, I grew up in
(03:29):
what some would consider to be I suppose a privileged
household that I had both parents. We were raised to
have respect for basically everybody who was involved in our
life in some way. It's a difficult thing for me.
Somebody like me, maybe some people that grew up in
my hometown, which was predominantly people like me, not to
(03:52):
say that there wasn't you know, kids that grew up
in were situations that there certainly were kids that had
one parent or no parents potentially and were in foster care,
kids that were generally attempting to get themselves into trouble
at some level. All that stuff very very possible right
in my hometown. But the economics aside, most of us
(04:16):
grew up in a similar situation. There weren't a lot
of areas that you would consider to be the slums.
There weren't areas that would be considered to be super
far behind, and the civilized idea of what you know,
a town of our size of about twenty five thousand,
(04:38):
would be everybody had for the most part, had clothes
and had the ability to go to school. And I
know there were people that probably were going through plenty
of hardships, but there was never any thought that something
like this would ever was ever gonna happen. And I'm
sitting here and yet another school shooting, you know, and
there have been plenty of others I'm sure sprinkled throughout
the year that were not like like maybe you know,
(05:00):
mass shootings, multiple deaths and all that stuff in different areas,
but it's not anywhere close to the kind of horror
that is the school shooting. And here's another one at
a Christian school done by a juvenile in Madison, Wisconsin.
It's a kid, It ends their own life at the
end of the thing, kills at least two people. Six
others are in the hospital. You're looking at a six
(05:23):
year old girl in Omaha who died because of a
shooting Sunday afternoon, And I just look, what are we
doing the society that we have. Somehow, our country, more
than any other country, has this cultural issue where people
are just grabbing firearms when times get tough, for things,
you escalate. You know, you have you know the other
(05:46):
story and this is from a long, long, long time ago,
but you have the inmate that was serving life in
prison who passed away, and he was serving life in
prison for a first degree murder charge because apparently his
girlfriend was being talked to by another guy. I mean,
(06:06):
what are what are we doing throwing your entire life
away because you just have that much pride, right, I
don't know, I don't know, We'll I'll open the phones.
I don't know how much therapeutic situation that we can
provide each other in a situation like this, And I
don't really feel like, you know, talking about this for
(06:27):
another four hour show, but if you have something to
say about this, or we can help each other try
to understand where the culture issues happen to be. Even
with a lack of details in these couple of shootings
that we're going to lead off with here, I'll do
the best that I can to sift through that, and
I will break in if there is some information being
shared by the law enforcement or maybe the people in
(06:50):
and around Madison who can provide a few additional answers.
We'll do the best that we can on that. If
you'd like to call his four HO two five five
eight eleven ten is the number. Four H two eight
to eleven ten. It's news radio eleven ten KFAB. Roughly
three and a half hours ago or so, there was
the reports of a school shooting, two victims dead, a
third person, who law enforcement officials say is a juvenile
(07:14):
who they believe is responsible for the shooting, also dead
at their own hand. And yeah, yeah, just just not
not great, not great news. Obviously, trying to understand what
the what the story is going to end up being.
If there is some additional breaking news with this, we
(07:38):
are going to pop in with that information. We have
an eye on what we believe to be a room
in the police department. There is media that has been
gathering there. We've been watching and noticing, and they've been
sitting down there microphones at the table, and we're just
(07:58):
awaiting someone to get in there and start talking to
us about this. If you missed out, the Abundant Life
Christian School, which we are led to believe as a
school of varying grades and age groups, was operating their
regular Monday schedule until just before eleven am Central time
(08:21):
when there were police reports of a school shooting that
was happening there. Police responded. As mentioned, there were two
deaths on top of the suspected shooter, and six others
who are injured and sent to a medical facility. The
governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers said on social media and
(08:46):
I quote this is just afternoon today. I am closely
monitoring the incident at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison.
We are praying for the kids, educators, and entire Abundant
Life School community as we await more information and are
grateful for the first responders who are working quickly to respond. Oh,
you know, and it's just we have to try to
(09:09):
figure out what to do with what we're doing in
this country. This isn't me pinning this on any one
group of people or any single object, or especially any
inanimate object. But this is a this is a thing
that unfortunately we just consistently have to worry about in
(09:30):
this country. Again, we'll play attention to this. If you'd
like to call in, the phone lines are open. I
know there's probably not a whole lot we can talk
about here. It's just it's a despondent thing for somebody
like me. I sit here and I want to come in.
I want to talk about fun stuff, have fun things
to do. It does feel weird to try to do
that with in a scenario where this obviously has to
(09:52):
be talked about, like we have to talk about it
because it is important information. It is what's being talked
about around the country. We are going to get to
other things throughout the I do want to get the
latest information, and as soon as they start sharing some
of this with us, we are going to hop in
and we are going to do that, And there's plenty
of other things that I'd like to talk about later
in the show, but to start the show today, I
(10:14):
don't know how I can sit here and talk about
anything else, to be completely honest with you now. Of course,
if you want to reach out via email, you can
Emory at kfab dot com as well. And the phone
line as mentioned four two, five, five, eight eleven ten
is that number we have Brian who is on our
phone line today? To start the show, Brian, Welcome to
the show today. What's on your mind?
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Well, you know, we can go back and this stuff
didn't start happening until we closed down all of our
mental institutions. Are saying asylums and things of that nature.
These are mental health issues that are not being addressed,
and this government of ours has pushed aside. It's absolutely absurd. Yeah,
And I mean where do we expect all these people
(10:57):
with these mental issues to go when we closed these
doors to these buildings where we were housing thousands of people? Yeah,
what thing is going to happen when you put them
out on the street?
Speaker 1 (11:07):
And what's wrong with our culture? Brian? That this is
something that it just seems like and I don't know
how other countries really operate when it comes to the
mental health aspect, like you're mentioning, because that certainly is
a major major factor to this. But what happened to
this culture, you know, post Columbine really when this became
a lot more prevalent in our country. Well, not that
(11:28):
violence hasn't always been happening, but especially at schools where
it just feels like this is just something that we're
waiting for the next one right now.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Well, I think I think our culture changed from a
you do something bad and there are consequences to your actions.
We've lost the account of the individual accountability. There's participation awards.
Are you kidding me? That's not you know, we're teaching
(11:55):
our kids not to own their actions. There's no accountability
for what they do. A kid can't feel a great
I can't fail a class now without oh well, we'll
give you five attempts on this paper, even though you
got a seventy five on it on the last time
and barely passed, and you couldn't pass it before.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
It's the culture we're in of no accountability at somebody
else's fault. I mean, look at our court systems. It's
always their upbringing, not anyone owning their own actions.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
That's a I couldn't really say it better, Brian. It's
definitely something that I think it was a generation of
parents that kind of instilled this that I want my
kid to feel good at all times and not really
get them prepared for what the real world looks like.
And that's not me trying to tell people how to
be parents, but it definitely feels like we've fallen short
on a lot of ways there, Brian. I appreciate you
calling in.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Yep, thank you.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah. So if you're wanting to be a part of
this conversation, I'd love to welcome you to it. Four
h two five five eight eleven ten is that number
as we again are waiting for more information coming from
this this law enforcement update that I'm sure we're going
to be getting here momentarily. We'll be doing more of
that coming up next on news Radio eleven ten kfab
(13:08):
wiscontent trying to understand what is happening here and what
we need to do to avoid this kind of thing
from happening. I know this is a conversation that happens
every time one of these things happens, but maybe this
is the time where we come up with a better
idea of what the heck is going on with our
world and our culture specifically. Phone number is four h
two five five A eleven ten and Marie is on
(13:30):
the line. Marie, welcome to our show today. What do
you think about this?
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Thank you, Amray for having me on. I want to say,
as a mother and a teacher and a mother to
a teacher, that I agree totally with what Brian is saying.
But on top of that, the schools have got to
start checking bags. That gun came in with that kid,
and there's no reason why we can't check bags. I
(13:55):
own cost money, but it'll give somebody a job. We've
got to stop those guns, I mean into the school building.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, that seems like, yeah, it seems like something we
can pay attention to. We're gonna go ahead and we're
going to jump in right now. We'll take more calls
in a second. But they are providing an update right
now in Madison from law enforcement. We're going to tune
in right.
Speaker 5 (14:13):
Now, start your live streams or do whatever you need
to do. And why are you doing that? My name
is Chief Sean Barnes, s h O N B A.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
R Nes.
Speaker 5 (14:24):
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 is 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,
(14:45):
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
(15:06):
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. Heard the details today
At ten fifty seven am, our team was called to
the Abundant Life Christian School in reference to an active shooter.
(15:28):
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 were not
releasing the age or gender of the student or any
other identifying remarks about the student. Two other people have died.
(15:50):
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 for students are also at other area hospitals
(16:12):
with non life threatening injuries. But 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 long time, and we're going
to do everything we can as a community to heal
(16:32):
those injuries as well. Many of you have asked me
about the why of this, Why did this happen?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
What do we know? What was the motivation?
Speaker 5 (16:43):
I do not know, but 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 community around our country.
(17:03):
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
(17:26):
no other threats or danger to the community. We're in
the process now 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 return to.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
The loved ones.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
This usually takes a while, but we have practice, unfortunately,
and practice and practice, and that's why we're able to
reunify students with their parents within hours of a school shooting.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
The reunification is taking.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
Place at the Dean Clinton on Stoughton Road, and I
certainly thank them for their help. Again, we need our
public to find an alternate route if that is.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Your normal way home.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
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 wants to get additional information. And lastly,
I want to just say thank you to everyone who's
(18:32):
standing behind me, the organizations and agencies that they represent,
the men and women of the Madison Police Department in
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,
(18:53):
if you will, as a public school teacher back in
nineteen ninety seven and I taught public si 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
(19:16):
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. So we ask for your patients. 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.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
On this particular incident.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
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 for our Chief Chris Carbon, thank.
Speaker 6 (19:54):
You you.
Speaker 7 (19:57):
Before I started, the only thing I can and 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 of the folks standing up here
with me today. Our hearts are with and our arms
(20:17):
are around everybody impacted today and everybody within our community.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
With that, I won't repeat the details.
Speaker 7 (20:25):
Shared by Chief Barnes, but I will share with you
the fire department activity for today. Much like Chief Barnes
mentioned at ten fifty seven, 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, fifteen ambulances. I would like to take
a moment and share our gratitude and for our county
(20:49):
partners throughout a multitude of vms and fire agencies that
joined us in the response today. We also had eleven
off duty chief officers that came in on this response.
It was a tremendous response from the Fire Department. We
transported four patients to Saint 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
(21:13):
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 fifteen 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,
(21:35):
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 over.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
To the Mayor, a chiefs, both of you.
Speaker 6 (22:02):
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
(22:24):
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.
(22:45):
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
(23:07):
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.
(23:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I am on record.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
That I think we need to do better in our country,
in our community to prevent gun violence, and I hope,
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
(24:15):
to have to deal with. And so I will ask
our entire community, in 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 and
by the county executive to the podium.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Well before we get to that. We'll keep you posted
if there's anything new that comes out.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
That was Mayor.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Saty, mister Conway, Satya Conway, who was there speaking on
behalf of her city, city of Madison, dealing with this
tragedy right now. But the most important information that we
know of at this point is that there is no motive.
(24:59):
A teenage each shooter deceased at the scene, another teenager
who was killed, teacher who was killed. Those are the
three victims who have died to this point. There are
six others, including two in critical conditions, that are being
treated at a hospital in Madison. And we will give
you that information as more of it comes out from
this school shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School, which
(25:21):
was a K through twelve Christian school, a private institution
for just regular, regular kids going to school on a Monday,
and had this happen earlier today. We'll give you more
information as it comes on news radio eleven to ten KFAB.
I'm going to get to these emails because I think
a lot of people have very different perspectives on what
(25:42):
the real problem is, and I just want to give
some credence to what some of these people think. Arnie
sent in an email to Emory at kfab dot com
and said, we have slowly steadily over the past fifty
years to valued life and we're still doing it. Yeah,
I mean we have, and I don't think that any
of us. I mean, there's been plenty of uncalled for
(26:03):
gun violence in our country and around the world honestly
for a long time. But our country, over the last
several decades to fifty years, and I'm sure Arnie is
talking about here, the rest of the world has found
ways to move past it. In a lot of ways.
There isn't a ton of crazy, large scaled violent crimes
(26:23):
outside of military operations, potentially, if you want to talk
about Russia, Ukraine, in the Middle East. Of course, there
are countries that have plenty of violence, but in terms
of some of the other European nations, or even in Australia,
the Asian countries like Japan and South Korea that we
pay attention to or we consider at this stage an ally,
(26:44):
they seem to not have this issue. How why what
exactly is happening? Aj says half the country are more things.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
It's okay to.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Murder babies for convenience, so in ag obviously referencing the
fact that abortion, which is another aspect to what many
would consider to be a devaluing of life. Yeah, I
don't know. I think that you can draw straight lines
from one of these things to the other. Although many
(27:12):
of those same people who would be in support of
keeping abortion legal, for instance, for convenience purposes or otherwise,
would also be considering that, you know, we need to
just remove guns. That's the only way that we can
cure this violence. I don't agree with that, and I
think that we need to create deeper conversations about what
exactly the problems are in this country, because if prohibition
(27:36):
of alcohol proved anything, once you try to take things
off of the streets that were once legal, that basically
just creates a black market and organized crime to make
sure that that continues, and it didn't last long, and
just after a decade of prohibition, the federal government realized
how stupid of an idea that happened to be and
made a change. Politicians can only get so much in
(28:01):
the way of trying to figure out what we can
and can't do to prevent stuff like this. What we
need to do as a collective society is figure out
how to make sure more people value life, and maybe
that can trickle on down to the next generation of children, who, unfortunately,
more and more teenagers seem to be the perpetrators of
crimes like this. It's really hard to imagine. We'll talk
(28:22):
about Nebraska sports and all sorts of other news coming
up on news radio eleven ten kfab