Jurors began deliberations Monday to decide whether Jennifer Crumbley is criminally responsible for the deaths of four students who died in 2021, when her son opened fire at a Michigan high school.
Crumbley, 45, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of involuntary manslaughter in the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School. Her son, Ethan Crumbley, was sentenced last year to life in prison after the teen pleaded guilty to multiple counts of first-degree murder and other charges.
The case is the first in which parents have been charged for a mass shooting carried out by their child.
Prosecutors said Jennifer Crumbley was negligent in giving her son a gun even though he had shown signs of mental distress in the months before the shooting. They shared text messages between the pair in which he claimed that he had seen a demon in the family’s home and that it was haunted. Jennifer Crumbley testified that the texts were part of a running joke in the family and not signs of a mental breakdown.
She said her son never asked her or her husband for help with his mental health, although texts from her son to a friend showed that he said she had laughed at him when he asked to be taken to a doctor. She said that he was sad in the months before the shooting as he dealt the death of his grandmother and a family dog but denied that he exhibited signs of depression.
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald stressed Friday that authorities did not have to prove that Crumbley knew her son would open fire at Oxford High School.
“I have to prove that she had a legal duty, she negligently performed that legal duty, she negligently did not take steps to take care and protect the other children in that school when there was a reasonable foreseeability that ordinary care was required — the smallest of things,” she said.
On the morning of the shooting, the Crumbleys were called to their son’s school after a teacher found disturbing drawings on a math assignment, including a gun and the words “blood everywhere” and “the thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”
“She could’ve taken him home. She could have taken him to work,” McDonald said Friday. “She could’ve told the school that they just gifted him a gun.”
School officials testified that there were several red flags in the lead up to the shooting, the Detroit Free Press reported. Ethan Crumbley wrote an autobiographical poem in which he called his family “a mistake” weeks before the shooting and he was caught researching bullets in class.
Jennifer Crumbley’s attorney, Shannon Smith, argued that school officials never told her about most of the problems that surfaced while he was in school. She characterized Jennifer Crumbley as a parent who was doing her best and the shooting as something that no one could have expected.
She asked jurors to vote to acquit “not just for Jennifer Crumbley, but for every mother who’s out there doing the best they can, who could easily be in her shoes.”
She said that the Crumbleys were a family that played together and joked with one another, adding that Ethan Crumbley never showed signs that he needed help.
“He’s had no history of hallucinations,” she said. “He has never shown his parents signs of mental illness. He certainly never showed signs of mental illness wanting to get a gun.”
Prosecutors said that social media posts showed that Ethan Crumbley planned the mass shooting at Oxford High School in advance. He shot and killed Hana St. Juliana, 14; Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 17. Seven other people were injured.
Authorities have also charged Jennifer Crumbley’s husband, James Crumbley, with four counts of manslaughter in the shooting carried out by their son. He is scheduled to face a jury in March.
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