Father of slain Oxford student Tate Myre: ‘We can’t unwatch’ surveillance video footage
Buck Myre, whose son Tate was one of four Oxford High School students murdered by Ethan Crumbley, said after the hearing on Crumbley's potential life sentence that it had been “pretty painful to go through," especially the first day, when surveillance video of the shooting was shown in court.
Myre, standing with his wife, Sheri, in a hallway in Oakland County Circuit Court, said they didn’t know much about what had happened on the day of the shooting, “which really hasn’t helped us start our healing process.” He said they always said they never wanted to watch the surveillance footage of the shooting — and were told by their grief counselor not to watch it — but they stayed in the courtroom as it was shown.
“We watched it, we can’t unwatch it now,” Buck Myre said. “But we were, we were forced to watch it. Because we don't have any answers for that day.”
He said there were failures at the school, but “the system isn’t allowing us to hold the system accountable,” saying they are hiding behind governmental immunity.
Myre: How could Crumbley's troubles not be identified?
The Myre family is among many plaintiffs who have civil lawsuits pending against the Oxford school district.
Buck Myre questioned how “we can have a kid that's at the top of the mountain in crisis — top of the mountain you can't get any higher — and he's wanting to get busted. He’s wanting to get busted so he can get sent to the counseling office. … It happened two days in a row. And he walked out of the counseling office.”
He asked how anyone is OK with school officials, who are in the business of kids, “not being able to identify somebody that’s in that level of a crisis. How are we OK with that?”
More: Why Oxford High School football has added a surprising coach to address its big void
Asked whether a life without parole sentence would bring closure, Buck Myre said no.
“Gets life without parole or gets 50 years, doesn’t bring the kids home,” he said. “It doesn’t bring any accountability to what we believe … needs to be a huge systematic change.”
He added: “What we all need to wake up and realize is this was an epic systematic failure. Epic.”
Sentencing will come later
The hearing concluded Friday, with Oakland County Circuit Judge Kwame Rowe expected to issue a written ruling in the coming weeks and then schedule formal sentencing after that.
Crumbley, who was 15 at the time, shot and killed four fellow students on Nov. 30, 2021, and wounded seven other people at the school. He pleaded guilty to all the charges against him.
Because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 in Miller v. Alabama that automatic sentences of life without parole are unconstitutional for juveniles, the court conducted the so-called Miller hearing, named after the case, to determine whether Crumbley is irredeemable or whether he should have the opportunity for parole someday.
Contact Gina Kaufman: gkaufman@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @ReporterGina.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Father of Oxford student Tate Myre: ‘We can’t unwatch’ video footage
