A school shooting in Michigan left four students dead. According to a prosecutor, the incident could have been prevented if the mother of the armed teen had removed him after seeing his violent drawings on the same day. The trial addresses parental responsibility in an uncommon legal proceeding.
Jennifer Crumbley is facing charges of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the November 30, 2021, attack at Oxford High School. Prosecutors allege that both she and her husband, James Crumbley, were grossly negligent, and they argue that their son’s actions were foreseeable.
Jennifer Crumbley was aware of Ethan Crumbley’s deteriorating mental health and social isolation, and she knew that a gun drawn on a math assignment resembled the one he had used with her at a shooting range, assistant prosecutor Marc Keast said.
Keast quoted a social media post, saying, “This was a purchase celebrated by Jennifer on Instagram: ‘Mom and son day testing out his new X-mas present.'”
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Instead of taking the boy home from school after seeing the drawing, Jennifer and her husband, James Crumbley, left a meeting after 11 minutes and allowed him to stay. Unfortunately, he soon killed four students and wounded several others.
Shockingly, no one had checked his backpack for a gun. The case against Jennifer Crumbley and her husband, who will stand trial in March, marks the first time that a parent has been charged in a mass shooting at a U.S. school.
“Even though she didn’t pull the trigger, she’s responsible for those deaths,” Keast said in his opening statement. Keast focused on two key themes: access to a gun at the Crumbley home and the school meeting on the day of the shooting, when a teacher was alarmed by the teen’s drawing of blood and a gun and the phrase, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”
“The two people in the world that had all of the information, all the background to put this drawing into context, were James and Jennifer Crumbley,” Keast said. “They didn’t say anything.”
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“They failed to follow through on ‘small and easy things that would have prevented all this from happening,'” he said.
Defense attorney Shannon Smith told jurors that evidence of the shooting would “make you sick and disgusted.” However, she argued that Jennifer Crumbley was manipulated by her son and wasn’t to blame.
Jennifer Crumbley, set to testify in her defense, was described as a “hypervigilant mother who prioritized her son above all else,” according to Smith. Quoting a Taylor Swift song, Smith remarked, “Band-Aids don’t stop bullet holes.” She framed the case as an attempt by the prosecutor to address issues that cannot be remedied with a simple Band-Aid.
On the initial day of testimony, he concluded with federal firearms agent Brett Brandon, who presented a video showing the shooter and Jennifer Crumbley at a shooting range three days before the attack. In the footage, the teen appeared confident as he examined his paper targets and assisted his mother in handling the 9 mm gun.
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During cross-examination, Brandon acknowledged that there was nothing illegal about taking the teen to a shooting range. Additionally, he stated that he didn’t know how the gun was stored at the Crumbley home.
A gun store employee, Cammy Back, informed jurors that James Crumbley, accompanied by his son, purchased a Sig Sauer handgun four days before the Oxford shooting. Jennifer Crumbley was not present at the store.
Ethan Crumbley, 17, was sentenced to life in prison in December after pleading guilty to murder, terrorism, and other crimes. He was 15 at the time of the shooting. The parents have been in jail for more than two years awaiting trial, unable to afford a $500,000 bond. In Michigan, involuntary manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
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