Police in Wisconsin on Tuesday (Dec 17) were interviewing friends and family and examining the online presence of a 15-year-old girl to determine what drove her to open fire at her private Christian school, killing a fellow student and a teacher before taking her own life.

The shooter, identified by police as Natalie Rupnow, who also went by Samantha, was a student at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, the state capital.

In one key way, the Madison attack is an outlier among US school and mass shootings: Women and girls are far less likely to carry them out than male attackers. Only about three per cent of all US mass shootings are perpetrated by females, studies show.

"Identifying a motive is our top priority, but at this time it appears that the motive was a combination of factors," Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes told a press conference.

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