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Antigo prom shooter's mom grapples with horrors

"If anything, I hope that somehow, after someone reads this, it will prevent something like this from happening again." — Lorrie Wagner, mother of Jakob Wagner

Liz Welter
USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

ANTIGO -  Lorrie Wagner woke to the buzz of her cellphone at 1 a.m. She didn't turn on the light until she stepped into the kitchen.

"What are you talking about?" she asked her friend, steadying herself on the stove.

"You might want to sit down."

Photos of Jakob and Lorrie Wagner sit on the coffee table at her home in Antigo, Friday, May 6, 2016.  Jakob Wagner, 18, fired a rifle at students exiting the Antigo High School prom on Saturday, April 23. He wounded two students before he was fatally shot by police.

That call in the middle of the night April 24 was how Lorrie Wagner learned that police had shot her son outside the Antigo High School prom. She wouldn't learn for hours that he had been killed.

She would spend those hours, and every day since, looking back over Jakob Wagner's 18 years of life, thinking about her son and what could be considered warning signs.

Antigo High School prom shooting | Full Coverage

His childhood struggle with mental illness and diagnosis of depression. The taunting and bullying that her son suffered starting when he was in grade school, where peers made fun of his lisp, his hygiene and his modest upbringing. The absence of a father in his life. His fascination with guns. The occasional outburst of inexplicable rage.

And perhaps most troubling, his emotional breakup with a girlfriend a month before prom, combined with his mother's decision two weeks before the dance to allow him to buy a semi-automatic assault-style rifle at a gun show. It was the gun he would take to prom and use to shoot two students, his mother said. According to police, he aimed it at two officers who rushed to the sounds of gunfire.

A police officer shot Jakob Wagner three times in what Lorrie Wagner now believes was an elaborate suicide plot by her son.

But she didn't know any of that when she was on the phone with her friend. None of what she was hearing made any sense at all.

A home with a park, playmates

Lorrie Wagner, 45, is a single mother who has worked at Walmart for 15 years to support herself and her son. She said her son's father lived in Antigo for a short while and had moved out of the community before Jakob was born. The man knew he had a son but had no interest in a relationship with Jakob, she said.

A native of Antigo and graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point with degrees in anthropology and geology, Lorrie Wagner remained in the community with her son to be close to her parents and other family.

After college, her first job was working on an archaeological dig in the region.

"It was a seasonal job and when winter set in, that job ended and I got some factory work and I stayed because my parents are here," she said.

In the meantime, her son was born. Her parents helped to support her and Jakob, including childcare. She got a full-time job in the automotive department at the local Walmart, first as an auto technician, completing oil changes and tire rotations. Later she moved up to become the department's service writer.

The mother and her young son initially lived in an apartment near a community park; when a dilapidated home abutting the park went up for sale 11 years ago, Lorrie Wagner sank her life savings into buying it.

She saw beyond the need for new windows, the cracked walls and sinking porch. She saw a lovely small home in the perfect location to raise her son.

"I could look out the back window and watch Jakob when he was little," she said. "It's a good place to live."

From early childhood, her son was a reticent boy who hung back among groups of people, close to her, and was slow to make friends. The park was the perfect setting, she believed, for him to warm up to playing with other children.

Lorrie Wagner sits in her living room with her cat, Jupiter, at her home in Antigo, Friday, May 6, 2016. Wagner's son Jakob, 18, fired a rifle at students exiting the Antigo High School prom on Saturday, April 23. He wounded two students before he was fatally shot by police.

"He always did much better one-on-one with other kids," she said.

The two of them were "joined at the hip," his mother said. She encouraged his interests, which included music, drawing and Renaissance festivals, while broadening his horizons to include her passion for fixing up their home.

Her son's first love was trains — an interest fostered by his grandfather when Jakob was a toddler. Other interests developed early in elementary school, including a strong interest in guns.

"He liked guns and read all he could about them and liked to draw them," she said. He fantasized about someday owning a gun and talked about the many options.

Jakob avidly studied guns and filled notebooks with his drawings of the models he saw depicted in magazines and on the internet. The drawings were accurate depictions of guns including rifles and assault-style weapons, Lorrie Wagner said. But he wasn't the only one of his friends to be captivated by the power of guns, and his interest didn't feel odd or alarming to her.

"Jake liked to draw and he drew guns," she said.

Bullied in school

Despite being an inquisitive, bright child, Jakob Wagner struggled in elementary school.  He lacked focus in school, sometimes fell asleep in class and didn't want to go to school because other children teased about the way he talked.

"He had a lisp and there were kids who picked on him for that," his mother said.

Initially, the bullying was about the lisp, and progressed to taunts about his short stature, his personal hygiene, his reluctance to participate in class and sports and the simple fact that he was poor.

Lorrie Wagner blamed the constant bullying on her son's fear of going to school for his classroom struggles and told teachers her concerns. Educators and Wagner developed an individualized education program, or IEP, for Jakob, but he continued to struggle and his difficulties intensified in middle school. His mother and the district butted heads about the best approaches to help him, and she decided to homeschool Jakob for a semester.

When his academic struggles continued while she home-schooled her son, she turned to a complete medical evaluation. A doctor said Jakob, 12, had depression and prescribed medication and therapy with a psychologist.

"At last," she said, "there were some answers."

'Like he was possessed'

In therapy Jakob learned skills to be comfortable among groups of people and strategies for focusing in school. Eventually he was able to stop the medication and finished the therapy sessions while in seventh grade.

About a year after the therapy finished, a side of her son emerged that terrified her.

One of the family pets is a bird named Squeakers, a sun parakeet native to the tropics with a stunning vivid yellow body and emerald green feathers along the legs and tail. Squeakers lived up to his name, tweeting and twirping a raucous racket when excited. The squawking was so loud on one fall night after Jakob Wagner started high school that "he snapped," Lorrie Wagner said. "He got his BB gun and shot the bird."

Lorrie Wagner's bird, Squeakers, sits on his cage in Antigo, Friday, May 6, 2016.

She was asleep when it happened. Her son came into her room and woke her to tell her what he had done.

"The look on his face was so dark, it was like he was possessed, and it was like he wasn't there," she said. "When he told me what he did, I wrapped him in a hug and told him I loved him and he started to cry." He collapsed on her bed sobbing and she stayed with him until he went to sleep.

Once he fell asleep, she went to the living room to check on the bird and found Squeakers huddled in a corner of his cage. She stroked Squeakers and couldn't find any injuries. It appeared that the bird's lush feathers prevented the pellet from penetrating and it had bounced off onto the floor of the cage.

She was relieved but mystified by her son's behavior — and unsettled by what followed.

"The next morning," she said, "Jake didn't remember any of this. He didn't remember getting angry about the bird or shooting the bird. None of it."

Success in high school

After her son became focused on his classes at Antigo High School, it seemed as if his life had turned around, she said. Jakob was on the school's honor rolls for all but two or three semesters; he had several circles of friends from art and music classes; and in his senior year he was a member of the school's jazz ensemble.

"The high school counselors worked with him so that he had classes that were smaller in size, and that made a big difference," she said. High school also offered a variety of classes in subjects that appealed to his artistic and creative nature.

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Although the bullying about personal hygiene and being poor continued in high school, it was minimal compared with what he faced in middle school. Also, having a network of good friends helped him to ignore bullies and be comfortable with who he was, she said.

A sign on Fifth Avenue welcoming visitors to Antigo, Friday, May 6, 2016.

After working for a year after high school, her son intended to enroll in the local technical college's welding program this fall because he wanted to learn a trade that also applied to his art interests, his mother said.

"He loved metals and making jewelry," she said. "Learning to weld would give him a job while he pursued all of his other interests."

During high school, Jakob also grew to love animation and repairing musical instruments. He enjoyed working at a local music store and would spend hours with his friends watching Japanese animated movies.

But he also enjoyed something more troubling: airsoft gun battles. He was a member of a group that stalked one another as snipers. His mother said the airsoft target practice and the gun battles were shared with a large group of friends and, at the time, wasn't worrisome behavior.

'He changed in high school'

All of his mother's observations seem to jibe with what several of Jakob's friends and community members told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin: that he was a young man who despite being tormented by bullies was thoughtful, compassionate and artistic — but also troubled.

In middle school, some of the students told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin they thought that, if there were ever a school shooting in Antigo, Jakob Wagner would be the shooter.

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"I know Jakob heard people saying those things. But he changed in high school," said Elliot Mosher, 19, who graduated with Jakob Wagner in 2015 and lives in Phlox, just southeast of Antigo in Langlade County. Mosher and Jakob bonded watching anime, or Japanese animation. In high school the bullying didn't seem to bother Jakob, he said.

Students would call Jakob names and his teachers would look out for him, Mosher said.

Photo of Jakob Wagner from his Instagram page.

Another friend who graduated with Jakob, Jennifer Fischer, 18, knew him since elementary school where she witnessed the bullying.

"The bullying wasn't that bad in high school and I thought everything was better for him," Fischer said.

Initially, the Unified School District of Antigo interim school district administrator told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin there was "absolutely no indication" Jakob was picked on while in class.

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USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin filed an open-records request April 27 seeking documents about bullying in Antigo schools and incidents related to Jakob Wagner in particular. On Wednesday, Donald B. Childs, interim district administrator, said his review of the records showed there were multiple "behavioral referrals" filed since 2008 about Jakob and there were two reports of bullying when he was in middle school.

In both bullying cases, the investigations concluded that each incident was minor and Jakob was the aggressor, Childs said. He declined to explain the reports because all of the documents were in the process of being mailed to USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

Childs also said that, prior to 2013, many verbal reports of bullying at the middle school were not documented in writing. In 2013, a newly hired principal, Brian Misfeldt, started a policy of documenting all bullying reports, Childs said. If teachers, students or Jakob's mother had talked to a middle school staff member about the bullying and had not provided anything in writing, it was likely there was no report of it.

Lorrie Wagner said she had told her son's school counselors about the bullying he suffered — but she didn't document any of her reports.

While her son seemed happier and was excelling in high school, Lorrie Wagner said, he continued to blossom into an adult after graduation.

"He was working, making some money and he was interested in so many things," she said.

By the time he had saved up some money, Lorrie Wagner believed he had adjusted well enough that she approved him fulfilling one of his lifelong dreams, to have his own gun.

'Not in his right mind'

About two weeks before the shooting, Jakob and a friend went to a gun show where he bought a semi-automatic rifle.

"I never would have let him buy a gun if I didn't think he was responsible enough," his mother said. "He was so happy with his gun. I think the target shooting was part of a release for him."

But two weeks before her son bought the gun, his girlfriend of 10 months broke up with him. Lorrie Wagner knew Jakob had been despondent over the breakup, and that the couple had planned to go to prom.

Photo of Jakob Wagner's Facebook page.

"Jake was so sad about that," his mother said. "He really liked her. But after a week, he seemed better and his friends were getting him out and he was doing stuff with them. ... Whether the breakup was the catalyst (for the shooting), we'll never know."

Lorrie Wagner said she believes her son didn't mean to hurt anyone when he began shooting at the students leaving prom. Rather, she said, he thought that his actions would cause police to shoot him.

She cannot see her son as a killer. Yet he took a rifle to his former high school. He shot at his former classmates, seriously wounding one boy's leg and grazing a girl's leg. He then aimed his rifle at police, according to the officers' reports.

A scenario runs through her head about the shooting that night: If her son had intended to create a lot of damage, he could have shot through the school windows, into the commons area where prom-goers were still gathered. He could have shot at the cars in the parking lot.

He had practiced target shooting. If he had planned to kill someone, he had the aim to do it.

She believes Jakob intentionally shot at students' legs.

In her mind, her son didn't plan to commit a mass murder. That wasn't him.

These are the things Lorrie Wagner tells herself.

"I know he wasn't in his right mind because he wouldn't hurt someone like that," Lorrie Wagner said. Her son had grown into an empathetic, thoughtful young man who cringed at the thought of killing something, she said.

Her thoughts circle around and around, trying to place the different pieces of her son's life into a framework she can understand: his depression, the breakup with his girlfriend, his interest in guns, the impact of bullying on self-esteem.

She doubts the police investigation will shed any light on her son's motives. Some things are not understandable, Lorrie Wagner said.

Jakob's last day

On the day of the prom, Lorrie Wagner planned an outing for the duo so they could watch the migration of great blue heron birds returning to a park in the region.

"We had a nice late picnic with sub sandwiches, and it was a nice day," she said.

Then Lorrie's directions turned them around; they wandered for three hours before they found their parked car.

Family photos of Lorrie Wagner and her son Jakob hang in her home in Antigo, Friday, May 6, 2016. Jakob Wagner, 18, fired a rifle at students exiting the Antigo High School prom on Saturday, April 23. He wounded two students before he was fatally shot by police.

"Jake was so mad," she said. "He was so angry, and I thought that anger was directed at me."

They returned home around 8 p.m. tired from the hike.

"Jake went upstairs (to his bedroom) and I could hear his television," she said. She assumed he was as tired as she was, so she went to bed. Exhausted from the day, Lorrie Wagner said she was sound asleep by 10:30 p.m.

After that 1 a.m. telephone call woke her with disturbing news, she raced up the stairs to check her son's room.

He was gone and she nearly collapsed in grief, she said. She knew she had to call the police, who told her to drive to the Wausau hospital. After a friend drove Lorrie Wagner to the hospital, the two women sat together in a waiting room, waiting for more information.

About 6 a.m, hours after the news had spread through town and even to the media, police told Lorrie Wagner her son had died.

"I was in shock," she said. "It was like someone had taken the oxygen out of the room."

In the days after the shooting, the Antigo community has rallied around her to provide support.

"This is an amazing community. People want to help me. They ask what they can do to help," she said.

The night of the wake for Jakob Wagner, hundreds of people stopped at the funeral home and among them were the parents of the boy who had been hospitalized and underwent surgery to repair the wound he suffered when Jake shot him.

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"His parents wanted to know what I needed," she said.

The day of the funeral, more than 300 people attended with folks spilling out into hallways and some waiting outside the funeral home, Lorrie Wagner said.

The procession of cars to take her son's body to the burial site stretched for almost two miles.

"That people care like this was overwhelming. Antigo is a good place with a lot of good people," she said. "For the most part, I think people realize that there was a lot more going on than someone who just wanted to shoot people at the prom."

A new reality

The funeral is over now, the earth smoothed atop Jakob's grave. There is no marker on the grave yet; Lorrie Wagner does not know what she wants it to say.

The community is starting to return to normal; Lorrie Wagner herself has gone back to work in the Walmart automotive department where her coworkers are like family.

"Everyone at Walmart cares and wants me to take the time I need," she said.

But every night she returns home from work to an empty house, where she is left alone again with her thoughts.

Lorrie Wagner pets her cat, Jupiter, at her home in Antigo, Friday, May 6, 2016. Wagner's son Jakob, 18, fired a rifle at students exiting the Antigo High School prom on Saturday, April 23. He wounded two students before he was fatally shot by police.

Her son, the center of her life, is gone. His memories linger, as do her own questions. Endless questions.

"The more I sit here, the worse it gets," she said.

She misses her Jakob's morning hugs, the laughter while he and his friends were hanging out upstairs watching videos and playing video games, and his delight when she made curry for dinner.

Without him at home to help her answer the questions, she is left alone with the incomprehensibility of it all and a forlorn wish.

"If anything, I hope that somehow, after someone reads this, it will prevent something like this from happening again."

Liz Welter: 715-898-7008, or liz.welter@gannettwisconsin.com; on Twitter @welter_liz.