A jury on Thursday found James Crumbley, the father of the teenage gunman who killed four students in 2021 at Michigan’s Oxford High School, guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
James Crumbley convicted of involuntary manslaughter
Update 7:23 p.m. EDT March 14: The father of the Michigan school shooter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter Thursday by a jury in the four deaths, according to The Associated Press.
It is the second conviction against Ethan Crumbley’s parents. According to the AP, both of his parents were accused of failing to secure a gun at their house and not addressing signs of mental distress.
James and Jennifer Crumbley both had separate trials. The AP reported, that they are the first parents in the United States to be charged in a mass shooting that their child had committed.
-- Jessica Goodman, Cox Media Group National Content Desk
Original story: Authorities charged James Crumbley with four counts of involuntary manslaughter after his son, then 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, opened fire at his school, killing 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana, 16-year-old Tate Myre, 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin and 17-year-old Justin Shilling. Seven other people were injured.
In February, a jury found James Crumbley’s wife, Jennifer Crumbley, guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter.
Jurors began hearing testimony in the case against James Crumbley last week. Prosecutors accused him of ignoring clear signs of his son’s deteriorating mental health before buying the teen the gun that he would later use in the Oxford High School shooting.
“This case is not about holding James Crumbley responsible for what his son did,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in closing statements. “It’s about his legal duty and his failure to perform it or to perform it in a negligent way.”
McDonald said James Crumbley bought his son a gun as a Christmas gift four days before the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting and then failed to keep it secured. She added that James Crumbley was “presented with the easiest, most glaring opportunities to prevent the deaths of these four students. And he did nothing. … He did nothing over, and over, and over again, and the evidence shows that.”
She said that text messages between James Crumbley and his wife showed that he had concerns about his son on the day of the shooting. That morning, 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.”
Still, the Crumbleys declined to take their son out of school because both had to work. McDonald said James Crumbley worked as a DoorDash driver, a job that allowed him to set his own hours.
“James Crumbley failed his son in a tragic way,” she said. “But he didn’t just fail his son. He failed Hana, he failed Madison, he failed Tate and he failed Justin. He failed to perform his legal duty to prevent these kids from being killed, and he failed their parents too.”
Defense attorney Mariell Lehman said in closing statements that the charges against her client “were based on assumptions and hindsight about James and his knowledge about his son.”
“The prosecution is asking you to second-guess the decisions made by James Crumbley on Nov. 30, 2021,” she said. “We aren’t here to look at things in hindsight. We’re here to look at what James Crumbley knew prior to and on Nov. 30 of 2021 before the shooting began.”
She emphasized that prosecutors showed no evidence that James Crumbley knew that his son posed a threat to his classmates or that he knew that his son had planned the shooting.
“The prosecution wants you to find that James could foresee that his son was a danger to others and that James acted in a grossly negligent manner or breached a duty that he owed to other people despite having no information at the time,” she said.
She stressed that her client had no idea of the mental distress his son was grappling with, though he knew that the teen was sad after dealing with a death in the family, the loss of a family dog and the move of his only known friend. She said school officials never told him that his son needed immediate help.
The cases against the Crumbleys are the first in which parents have been charged for a mass shooting carried out by their child.
Ethan Crumbley, now 17, pleaded guilty in 2022 to two dozen charges, including terrorism and multiple counts of first-degree murder. In January, a judge sentenced him to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole
Prosecutors previously said that social media posts showed that the teen had planned the November 2021 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.
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