We have people running from the Mount Horeb Middle School now. They saw what appeared to be a teenager carrying a rifle, black pants, and a backpack. Suspect is a male, eighth grader using a black long hair and black clothing. COPY THAT. >> DROP IT! DROP IT! >> SHOTS FIRED ON THE STREET! >> SHOTS FIRED. >> THERE WAS a shooting at the school. >> On May 1st, 2024, Mount Horeb dispatch began receiving 911 calls just after 10:30 a.m. A neighbor watching from her front window described a teenager walking toward the middle school with a backpack and what looked like a rifle. Within 20 minutes, three officers would fire their weapons on East Garfield Street. A 14-year-old would be dead in the roadway and a town of 7,500 would learn that the boy on the sidewalk had been one of their own, an eighth grader at the school he was walking toward. >> The following presentation contains material that some viewers may find disturbing. The case files and recordings shown here were obtained through official Freedom of Information Act requests submitted directly to the police department and may include previously unseen footage. Viewer discretion is advised. >> It was a regular Wednesday. Children at Mount Horeb were on a lunch break enjoying their meals in the cafeteria. That's when officers started receiving calls that suggested that this quiet village located about 23 miles southwest of Madison, Wisconsin, was going to register a tragic day. >> My wife just called and said that she could see the suspect walking east towards the perimeter on our video system. >> Okay, hold on one second. >> running off. And it was at >> Hold on one second. Hold on one second. Yeah. Okay, where? >> Towards perimeter. >> How long ago was this? >> Uh she said at 10:36 on our camera system. I'm driving. I can't look at it right now, but >> Okay, I've got that in. Um, and did she have any uh suspect information as far as like what they're wearing or anything? >> Uh, she didn't say, she just hung up. Um, >> 6524 6520, according to the caller, they said if you're looking towards the school across from the tennis courts by the pine trees, they saw what appeared to be a teenager kneeling down, observed him carrying a rifle, and now heard two reports. Uh, served to be a teenager, black pants, and a backpack. >> At approximately 11:11 a.m., a 60-year-old woman sitting on her couch on East Lincoln Street looked out her front door and saw something odd, a figure walking across the grass with a backpack slung over one shoulder and what appeared to be a long gun gripped in both hands. She dialed 911 and what she described to dispatch was almost more unsettling than the weapon itself. The figure wasn't running or hiding. He was, in her words, strolling down the sidewalk and up the grass, not in a hurry. She stayed on the line for nearly 3 minutes watching as the figure walked east to west past the tennis courts behind Mount Horeb Middle School until he disappeared into a dense line of trees just to the right of tennis court sign number 10. But hers wasn't the only call coming in that morning. Just minutes earlier at 11:08 a.m., dispatch had taken a very different kind of call. This one was from a resident reporting that someone had crashed their car into their home. So many concerning calls within the same radius had officers concerned, forcing them to check out what was going on at Mount Horeb. When the first responding officer arrived, he saw something no officer ever wants to see outside a school in session, a teenager standing on East Garfield Street with what looked like a black rifle in his hands. That officer was school resource officer Steven Rosemire. He pulled into the high school parking lot, and then he saw something that stopped him cold. 20 to 30 middle school students sprinting east away from the building toward the baseball field. In Rosemire's own words, he had never seen anything like this before. The students weren't smiling. They weren't laughing. They were in pure fear and running for their lives. >> E 55-22, we have people running from the Mount Horeb Middle School now. They said there was an active shooter response for a school emergency traffic on County W. >> Looks like 10-20, I guess. If that's the case, then we have someone >> Copy. I'll get County U a CTA created here. And tell the signs here as you are at the U 4503 4505. >> 510. >> Let's move to emergency traffic, which we've been on now for a second. Let's do routine over on three. Routine over on three. >> He then saw an individual up close in an oversized green jacket and tattered, well-worn pants standing at door 14 of the Mount Horeb Middle School. He was pulling on the door trying to get inside. Rosemire's first fear wasn't for himself. it was for the hundreds of students and staff still inside that building. He stopped his squad and grabbed his rifle. He stepped out and he started yelling. >> DROP IT! DROP IT! >> FROM 40 YARDS AWAY, Rosemeyer screamed for him to drop the rifle. The teenager ignored him, turned back to the door and pulled on it again. Then he turned around and started walking toward the officer, the rifle held across his midsection. In Rosemeyer's own words, he was lumbering toward him. And then he pointed the rifle directly at Rosemeyer's face. At that moment, Rosemeyer thought he would never see his children again. That was also the moment when the officers noticed that their suspect was a teenager. >> Can you advise 2801 the stairway created here and self-assigned here as you are able to do so? 4503 4505 Let's go to emergency traffic which we've been on now here for a second. Let's do 801 3. >> DROP IT! DROP IT! >> 6524 SHOTS FIRED. >> DROP IT! >> 65 SHOTS FIRED. >> SHOTS FIRED. >> DROP THE RIFLE! DROP IT! 24 SUSPECT'S DOWN. DROP THE RIFLE! 6124 SUSPECT STILL moving on the ground with the rifle. Male green pants or green jacket brown pants. He's laying on the ground on East Garfield Street in front of the middle school. >> Anyone see the one shot? >> 6124 subject still moving. >> Subject still moving. >> Drop the rifle! >> DROP IT! >> SIR, GET OUT OF THE STREET! >> GET OUT OF HERE! >> You good, Steve? >> Negative, he is down right in front of the school. >> Copy, is he the one shot? Does anybody have a gunshot wound? 10-99 SW copy and no other units injured. Is that correct? >> Affirmative. >> Thank you. Air remains restricted on the >> For rifles, I believe that is left side. He was last seen waving it up in So, still on >> 6030, copy. >> Okay. Uh You good, Steve? Okay. >> No, no, you're getting don't. I don't want crossfire. >> 6502, we're going to be making Moving up with the other deals. Negative. We have subject down. Not moving at this time. >> Copy. Subject no longer moving. 6515, 23. And that's Carson. >> Yep. >> Right here, 14. >> Let's approach from maybe where you can't see us, from behind. >> 690, copy. >> 102, 104, I'm headed that way, but be advised >> Copy that. >> All right. Carson, get up on me on the field. Okay. >> 6734, I'm in route as well. Do you have any idea of where they want us at all? >> 6502, keep advised if we want to go ahead and proceed to go. >> 6505, we need uh and Hamlin and Garfield shut down to any traffic down there. And Garfield and East. >> Verhoeven and Hammon, Verhoeven and East. >> 6524, rifles removed from suspect. >> You said rifle recovered from the suspect? >> Over. >> 6524, your radio is terrible. Can you say the rifle is recovered from the suspect? >> Yes, 6524, affirm. >> 6524, rifle recovered from the suspect at 11:23 hours. Verhoeven 83 is 10-9 at 21. >> 65 >> 6524, can I get an EMS to his location? >> EMS is 10-50 incoming. >> An officer removed the rifle from his body and another secured him in handcuffs. The teenager's left leg was severely burned, the skin blackened, portions of it peeling. This was likely from the firework he had thrown just minutes earlier. School surveillance footage captured him pulling out a commercially manufactured firework and lighting it. It exploded with visible sparks and as he ran from it, smoke could be seen coming from his pants. Then EMS arrived and began cutting away the clothing. That's when one officer noticed the handwritten text on the front of his T-shirt, Natural Selection. At 11:48 a.m., UW Mount Horeb Intermediate Center. For 17 minutes, they worked on him in the roadway. At 12:05 p.m., Dr. Mike Ward pronounced the teenager deceased. Once the area was secured, investigators began documenting what was left on and around him in the street. The first thing they collected was the rifle laying across his stomach. On closer inspection, it wasn't a rifle at all. It was a Ruger .177 caliber pellet rifle painted entirely black with no orange safety tip visible. From a distance, it looked identical to a real firearm. In his pockets, investigators found a handful of silver-wrapped Hershey's Kisses. Across the roadway and surrounding areas, the Wisconsin State Crime Lab marked dozens of evidence locations. Knives, tissue paper, a glass bottle filled with clear liquid, an unfired cartridge, fired cartridge casings, bullet fragments, scattered pieces of clothing, 10 commercially manufactured fireworks, and sitting alongside everything else, a container of uranium ore fragments ordered from an online distributor called United Nuclear was also discovered. Why did Damian do it? The subject was not a criminal mastermind. He was identified as 14-year-old Damian who also studied at Mount Horeb. So, why would he walk up to his own school cafeteria with a pellet gun? The shirt he had on told enough. Damian's T-shirt said "Natural Selection" in black ink, the same text that was written on Eric Harris's shirt, who was one of the culprits in the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre. According to a family member who reviewed Damian's web forum and social media after the shooting, Damian had copied so much from the Columbine shooting. The propane was similar to the ones placed in Columbine's cafeteria. The family members' conclusion was blunt. Damian wanted to simply identify with Columbine shooter Eric Harris and was imitating him. His behavior was already known to classmates. One student told Detective Frisch that 2 days before the attack, Damian asked her to switch gym groups and said if she did, he would spare her. He wanted to name his gym group Columbine. Another student reported that during a recent online game, Damian asked to be called the Columbiner. His online life was an open record nobody connected. A friend of 6 years told investigators, Damian's other classmates saw him as the weirdo, called him slurs, and bullied him over his interest in anime. The same friend said Damian's website contained rants, fantasies about killing people, and references to severe depression and schizophrenia. Roughly 3 months before the attack, Damian had asked out a girl he liked, and she rejected him. He told a classmate not to come to school on May 1st because he intended to pull the fire alarm. In the weeks before May 1st, Damian had asked family members to buy him a firearm, but they refused. He had also asked to be driven to the site of a previous school shooting somewhere up north, possibly western Wisconsin. Officer Rosemeyer had to think many times before pulling the trigger. But when officers set foot inside Damian's room, they realized it was his plan all along. He had seen it coming. The first thing they saw was the wall. On the desk next to his computer, officers found a black and white notebook filled with Damian's writings, which suggested that he had been thinking about the attack for months. Officers also found a duffel bag in the crashed SUV that he'd never made it past. Inside the bag, they discovered a gas can, a butcher knife, a hammer, a glass jar of liquid, and orange Nerf gun in the outside pocket. He also had more propane inside the car. Whatever the original plan had been, it had required driving. Damian had never driven a car before in his life. He had asked a family member for the keys that morning, claiming he needed something from the car. Minutes later, the SUV crashed into a neighbor's residence, came to rest against a tree, and Damian had run. Damian was just a kid, and officers simply couldn't figure out the motive. All they knew was that Damian's actions weren't impulsive. He had been planning since January 29th, giving him plenty of time to think it through, gather his materials, and choose his date. By his own writing, May 1st was deliberate. The weather would be warmer. But buried inside the pages of his diary, beneath the timeline, and the to-do lists, and the apologies he'd already written to his mother, investigators found three words scrolled down as a directive, a target, a motive, if there was one to be found. Get the popular kids. It was the closest thing to an explanation he ever left behind. No criminal charges were filed against officers Rosemeyer, Stoddard, or Stevens. Damian was buried weeks later. This concludes the report from our investigation division at Twin Scope Cops. All individuals involved remain presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Thank you for supporting verified and responsible case analysis. Your engagement helps us continue this work, and we invite you to share your thoughts respectfully in the comments.