Ethan Crumbley said give the victims what they want. Judge agrees: Life in prison

In the end, whatever mental illness Ethan Crumbley may have, the judge concluded it did not interfere with the teen's ability to plan and carry out the deadliest school shooting in Michigan's history.

Rather, Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Kwame Rowe said in locking up the teenage killer forever, Crumbley has an obsession with violence, planned the massacre for weeks in advance, carried it out — and chose to stay alive so that he could witness the suffering and enjoy the notoriety he desired.

Mental illness, the judge noted, didn't interfere with any of that.

“This started with him asking for a better gun to carry out the school shooting," Rowe said of the killer, who was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole Friday for the 2021 massacre that killed four Oxford High School students and injured seven others, including a teacher.

'Nobody's fault but his own'

“He could have changed his mind (after shooting his first victim)," Rowe said in handing down the sentence. “But he didn’t. He continued to walk through the school picking and choosing who was going to die.”

"As the defendant said in his own words," Rowe said, noting Crumbley's comments to the court, "this is nobody’s fault but his own."

Crumbley's punishment was handed down after a day of gut-wrenching statements from grieving parents, victims who survived and traumatized students whose sense of security has forever been shattered, including a 16-year-old student who looked at the killer in court and said: "Today I want you to look at me.”

Crumbley, who kept his head down nearly the entire hearing, briefly glanced up to look at the girl.

Many openly wept as they recounted the horror of Nov. 30, 2021, when then 15-year-old Crumbley emerged from a bathroom and opened fire with his brand-new gun.

Just four days earlier, his father had taken him on a Black Friday shopping trip, and bought him the 9mm handgun that he had been begging for, using his son's money to pay for it.

Crumbley's actions would claim the lives of 16-year-old Tate Myre; 17-year-olds Madisyn Baldwin and Justin Shilling; and 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana.

“We’re all cried out," said Buck Myre, whose son Tate was killed in the shooting.

'We need to find a way to find forgiveness'

Struggling at times to compose himself, Myre told the judge about the night he got a call from his wife, telling him there was a shooting, and how the two rushed to a Meijer parking lot where the fleeing students had gathered, and started looking for their son.

But the unimaginable had happened. They were summoned to a manager’s office and got the news “that Tate wasn’t with us anymore.”

“The thing that stands out to me is what my wife said. She put her head in her hands and she said, ‘Not my baby boy,’” Myre said through tears.

Two years later, the pain still clings like a heavy coat, he said. But they are trying to move on, to honor their son.

"We need to find a way to find forgiveness — forgiveness to you, forgiveness to your parents, forgiveness to the school, what other choice do we have?" Myre said.

Craig Shilling, whose son Justin was shot execution-style in a bathroom stall after being ordered to his knees, was not fixated on forgiveness as he addressed the court.

'My son doesn't get a second chance, and neither should he'

The grieving father who said he still waits up at night for his son to come home, to walk through the door, wanted vengeance.

His son was Crumbley's final victim before he surrendered to police.

"It's unbearable to know that he's never going to walk through that door," said Shilling, who implored the judge to lock the shooter up forever, never mentioning his name.

"I'm going to ask you to lock this son of a bitch up for the rest of his pathetic life," Shilling said. "My son doesn't get a second chance, and neither should he."

Justin's mother, Jill Soave, pleaded for the same.

"No mother should have to put her child in the ground," Soave said, before directing her words to the killer. "You may have caused the pain and terror you intended to, but you have not destroyed us … I don't focus on hating you, but I also don't feel a drop of pity to you … you're nothing to me … while you rot in jail, we will push on … and we will spread love and kindness in honor of our angels."

During the hearing, the judge spoke gently to every victim who provided a statement, apologized for their loss, thanked them for having the courage to speak and told the parents he couldn't begin to imagine their pain.

'I was not allowed to hold her hand'

Madisyn's mom in particular left many in the courtroom in tears, as she recounted the horror of looking for her daughter at the parking lot, "dropping to the floor" after learning she was dead, hearing her younger daughter scream in terror after telling her the news, then being denied the opportunity to see her until the following day at the coroner's office, where she had to identify her beautiful girl through a window.

"I couldn’t move my feet," said Nicole Beausoleil. "I looked through the glass — my scream should have shattered it ... that was not my daughter. Madisyn was far from lifeless ... As I banged on the door and demanded to touch her, I was not allowed to hold her hand ... I was dragged away screaming like a toddler."

The judge also heard from a grieving sister: Reina St. Juliana, who read a statement from their mom, who called Hana the perfect version of her, a caring child who always did the dishes and came up with all the Christmas presents for everyone because she knew what everyone in the family liked.

Reina St. Juliana also expressed her pain in moving forward without her sister. She thought they would speak at each other’s weddings.

“Instead of speaking at her wedding, I spoke at her funeral,” Reina said.

And instead of fishtailing her hair for homecoming, she said, "I curled her hair in a casket."

Like others before him, Hana's father also pleaded with the judge to hand down the stiffest punishment.

“There can be no forgiveness,” Steve St. Juliana said. “There can be no rehabilitation.”

The killer calls himself a bad person, seeks no favor

The last person to speak before the judge announced the punishment was Crumbley, who spoke publicly Friday for the first time.

"We are all here because of me today, what I did ... because of what I chose to do. I could not stop myself," Crumbley said, adding: "My parents did not know what I planned to do, they are not at fault."

He did not ask for leniency, but asked the judge to honor the victims' wishes.

"Any sentence that they ask for, I ask that you impose it on me," Crumbley said. "I want them to be happy, I want them to feel secure and safe. I don’t want them to worry another day."

He also apologized, and called himself "a really bad person."

"I have lied. I've hurt many people," he said, adding "I do plan to be better. I will change. I am trying, and all I want is for the people I hurt to have a final sense ... that justice has been served."

Victims' trauma surpasses what they said in court, prosecutor says

In pushing for the harshest punishment possible, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald argued Crumbley's crimes triggered a tsunami of trauma for scores of students, parents and an entire community.

All of it could have been avoided, she said, but the teen chose to keep his plan a secret.

"He could have disclosed that he had a gun and was planning to shoot up his school, but he did not," McDonald said.

"Today was about victims. We heard their voices," the prosecutor said.

But the trauma was far more severe than what was heard in court, she said, noting the parents suffered far more than what they discussed Friday.

Madisyn's father didn't talk about picking out a casket, and how he hoped that his daughter wasn't in fear when she was shot.

How another victim's father didn't talk about how he sat in silence after first meeting with prosecutors, and could barely utter a word.

Justin Shilling's mom didn't talk about what it felt like when just a few months ago, she was finally given the sweatshirt her son was wearing on the day of the shooting, still bloodstained.

'He can be rehabilitated. He is redeemable,' advocate says

Defense lawyers, meanwhile, urged the judge to spare Crumbley a life forever behind bars, maintaining he is too young to be denied a chance to turn his life around.

Perhaps most notably, the defense argued, Crumbley was on the "precipice" of a crisis and spiraling out of control, with no one to help him.

"Ethan has never bragged about what he did," his lawyer, Paulette Michel Loftin told the judge, stressing he has changed from the "broken, sad" kid she first met two years ago.

"He is a different person, and he is remorseful," Loftin said. "He sees the wrongs in his actions. He sees hope for the first time."

A guardian ad litem assigned to Crumbley echoed similar concerns.

"He can be rehabilitated. He is redeemable," said Deborah McKelvy, choking up at times. "The Ethan I met two years ago is not the Ethan sitting here today at sentencing. That's not to say he doesn't have a ways to go, because he does. But he's demonstrated that he can change himself for the better."

She stressed: "His life is salvageable."

Students describe their loss

But the flood of victims' emotions prevailed.

Olivia McMillan said she feared school shootings since she was 13, when the Parkland shooting in Florida rattled her sense of security in 2018.

Then tragedy struck at her school in 2021, robbing her of her best friend, Justin Shilling, the boy she met in middle school, the one with the big smile, round cheeks and crooked teeth.

"He was such a light to be around," she told the judge.

When the shooting first broke out, she thought it was a senior prank, someone banging on lockers. But her teacher locked the door in the classroom. A shooting was confirmed. And so she sent a group chat to her closest friends.

Justin was in that group chat.

"Are you OK?" she recalled asking him. "The response we got still makes me sick to my stomach."

Justin, she would learn, was in the bathroom with the shooter. He responded to his friends: "I love you guys."

"I dream of what could have been," she told the judge. "I try to lay down at night and escape … but I can't."

Madeline Johnson, Madisyn's best friend, also pleaded for a life sentence, saying anything else "would be a slap in the face" to the victims, their families, the students and the Oxford community. She told Rowe about the last time she saw her friend, how the two parted ways in a hallway while going to their separate classes, how gunshots then rang out and how she learned from another student's Snapchat story that Madisyn died that day.

However, the reality of losing her best friend did not kick in until weeks later, when students returned to school for the first time.

The students who witnessed classmates' deaths

"I sat in our ceramics class. I waited for her to come sit at her seat next to me, and I waited and waited, and I finally realized she was never coming," Madeline Johnson said through tears, stressing the blame for the tragedy lies with one person.

"It lies with that monster sitting over there who can't even look at me," Madeline said.

Survivor guilt was raised numerous times at the hearing, though few have experienced it like Keegan Gregory, who hid in a bathroom with Justin Shilling on the day of the shooting and managed to escape.

He was there when Shilling was fatally shot, and was texting his family the horrific details.

“It was and always will be the most terrifying moment of my life,” he said of being cornered in the bathroom with the gunman, with no option but to run to save his life.

Like Gregory, Kylie Ossege also spoke of the horrors of witnessing death. The Oxford student, who herself had been shot in the leg, was on the ground lying next to Hana, caressing her hair, urging her "a thousand times" to keep breathing, and promising help was on the way.

Ossege said she repeated her mother’s phone number and created math problems in her head and solved them to make sure she wasn’t dying. She said she lay there for 15 minutes.

“I will continue and live on for those that we’ve lost,” Ossege said.

Then pointing her finger at the shooter, she said: "No one is ever going to stop me from living my life to the fullest."

Molly Darnell, the teacher who was struck by Crumbley's bullets, echoed the girl's sentiments.

“It is easier for me to see you as a monster,” Darnell said to the shooter, stressing she still carries love, joy and hope in her heart. "I am the writer of my own story,” she said. “You may not be glancing my way today, but I know you can hear me.”

Crumbley pleaded guilty to murder and terrorism charges last year, admitting he planned and carried out the shooting, and meant to cause panic and fear in the school that day.

In September, Rowe determined that Crumbley was eligible for a sentence of life without parole following a lengthy and emotional Miller hearing, a mandatory proceeding that helps judges decide whether juveniles should spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Meanwhile, his parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, continue to maintain their innocence in the unprecedented case as the first parents in America charged in a mass school shooting. They are accused of ignoring their son's mental health troubles and buying him a gun instead of getting him help — the same gun he used in the November 2021 massacre.

The parents maintain they had no way of knowing their son would shoot up his school, and that the gun was safely stored.

They will face separate trials in January on involuntary manslaughter charges.

Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Oxford High School shooter will never leave prison, judge rules