UPDATE: Suspect identified, but police chief still plays word games with press-How can the Madison, Wisconsin police chief not know if Monday’s deceased suspected school shooter is male or female? That’s what some in the media want to know, reacting to Chief Shon Barnes claim in a media update on the deadly shooting.
“WTF? Police in Wisconsin are unable to determine if the Christian school shootėr “is male or female,” podcaster and video reporter Nick Sortor is asked on social media, replying to video posted by Townhall.com, titled “Madison, Wisconsin Police Chief: We don't know whether the shooter is male or female.”
“I don’t know if it’s a male or female, but the police department did not fire their weapons,” Barnes told reporters while fielding questions about the suspected shooter police found dead inside the school on Monday. Barnes was updating the meeting after several, including the suspect, were either killed or wounded during the shooting.
Chief Barnes’ comment suggests that police were not able to determine whether the body they found was either male or female, though it’s possible that he was referring to the suspect’s unknown professed gender “identity.”
UPDATE: The plot thickens…
Chief Barnes has now identified the suspect as 15-year-old biological female student Natalie Rupnow, who went by the name "Samantha," but he said he wouldn't provide, or even consider, Rupnow's gender identity.
In a follow-up briefing earlier on Monday, Chief Barnes replaced the words “male or female” with “gender.”
And, instead of reiterating that he didn’t “know” whether the suspect was male or female, he said that his office was “not releasing” any details about the suspect’s sexual status:
“We know that the suspect shooter was a teenage student who attended the school.
“At this time, we are not releasing the age or gender of the student or any other identifying remarks about the student.”
“Why are police trying to hide this fact?” Sortor asked in a post reacting to Chief Barnes’ latest evasion. “The shootėr has been identified as a female, per multiple sources,” Sortor claimed, without naming his sources.
Subsequently, the Associated Press reported that the suspect “was a 17-year-old female student,“ according to an unnamed law enforcement officer - which does nothing to clarify whether the suspect was a biological male or female, given the AP's embrace of transgender ideology and terminology.