'I'm sorry, God! ... Why didn't you stop it?' Ethan Crumbley breaks down in jail

In a manifesto on the eve of his massacre, school shooter Ethan Crumbley proclaimed, "There is no God ... I am the demon ... I’m gonna open fire on everyone in the hallway."

Yet months later in jail, he cried out: "Why didn’t you stop it God? Why didn’t you stop it when it happened … I’m sorry God!"

These two versions of Crumbley were portrayed in court Tuesday during a crucial hearing to determine whether life in prison without the possibility of parole is an appropriate sentence for the teenager who murdered four classmates and injured seven others in the 2021 mass shooting at Oxford High School.

Ethan Crumbley 'a broken person with a broken brain'

The hearing, which adjourned Tuesday until Aug. 18, included never-before released video of Crumbley in jail, where he is seen strapped to a chair in a highly distressed state jerking about. He is wearing a hood designed to protect jail workers from spit. In another video, he is heard blaming God and crying out in distress repeatedly, "He could have stopped it" and "He could have saved her," while authorities try to calm him down. Both videos were from May of this year.

According to a psychological expert who testified on behalf of the defense, the video highlights the mental illness that Crumbley long battled without any help — not from his parents, a doctor, a therapist or the school.

As psychologist Colin King put it, "He’s a broken person with a broken brain."

"What we just witnessed — someone saying, 'God, why didn't you stop it?' That’s exactly how psychosis works," King testified. "Somehow you don’t understand the outcome of the consequences. He’s having a panic attack and a break with reality."

King also testified that he believes Crumbley was showing remorse.

“Ethan is slowly coming to grips with what he did, and he is expressing extreme sorrow,” King said, adding that by asking why God allowed the shooting to take place, even though he himself carried it out: “That’s a break from reality.”

While the videos were shown in court, Crumbley kept his eyes shut.

Prosecution challenges psychologist: You cherry-picked

King, who has a Ph.D. from Wayne State University, is an expert in mental health and brain injuries who has testified in about 25 juvenile lifer cases. He spent more than seven hours on the stand Tuesday as the prosecution sought to discredit his testimony. A prosecutor pressed King to explain why he excluded from his testimony and a prepared report numerous details about Crumbley's crimes, excerpts from his journal about how he planned to carry out the biggest mass shooting in the history of Michigan, and his obsession with torturing and killing baby birds and other kids.

King testified that a culmination of childhood trauma, neglectful and abusive parents, a lack of acknowledgment by the school system and mental health issues led to the events of Nov. 30, 2021, all of which he documented in a report that the prosecution took issue with.

Specifically, Assistant Prosecutor David Williams argued through cross-examination that King cherry-picked details about Crumbley to make him look more sympathetic than he really is, and that King intentionally left out the horrific acts he engaged in before and during the shooting, including:

• Executing students at close range.

• Planning ahead of time that he would not take his own life because he wanted to live to see his victims suffer.

• Writing in his journal how he would carry out the shooting.

• Torturing and killing baby birds and taking joy from it.

King conceded that all of those details are disturbing. However, he would not budge on his position that Crumbley did what he did because he is mentally ill, and, that he can be rehabilitated one day with treatment.

"Ethan is mentally ill, there is no doubt in my mind," King testified. "I'm not here to make excuses for Ethan Crumbley. He planned the attack and my heart goes out to the victims' families."

Parents blamed for 'litany of horrible abuse'

But, King stressed, it was his mental illness that drove him to plan and carry out a deadly mass shooting.

According to King, Crumbley has a major depressive disorder with psychosis, anxiety and features of obsessive-compulsive disorder — all of which he is being treated for with medications being dispensed by a jail psychiatrist.

The expert, however, agreed with the prosecution on at least one front: Crumbleys' parents ignored him. As he testified in court: "What stood out to me was that he told his parents that he was hearing voices, and that he needed to see a therapist," King testified. "And it never happened."

King described the influence of Crumbley’s parents as a “litany of horrible abuse.”

James and Jennifer Crumbley, who bought their son the gun that he used in the shooting, are charged with involuntary manslaughter. They are the first parents in America to be charged in a school shooting, though their appeal to have the charges struck down is pending before the Michigan Supreme Court.

King was the last witness to testify on behalf of the defense, which is trying to convince the judge to give Crumbley a shot at parole one day, arguing his brain is still forming, and that he has the ability to change one day.

The prosecution disagrees, arguing Crumbley never deserves to be free again for murdering four classmates, injuring seven others and terrorizing an entire community that is still struggling to recover.

'Lots of people suffer depression, and they don’t kill people'

Williams, the assistant prosecutor, took issue with King portraying Crumbley as a broken person "waiting for something terrible to happen."

"He wasn’t waiting — he was planning," Williams shot back. "He planned about it. He wrote about it. He recorded about it — and then he carried it out."

Williams also scoffed at the mental illness argument.

"Lots of people suffer depression, and they don’t kill people," Williams said. "Those people do not become mass shooters."

Williams also pointed out that Crumbley's IQ shows he has above-average intelligence.

"Shouldn't he have known better," Williams asked the expert.

"Unfortunately, intelligence does not protect someone from mental illness," King responded. "So being very intelligent doesn’t mean that you cannot be mentally ill."

King cited actor Robin Williams as an example, noting the actor was highly intelligent, yet battled mental illness and committed suicide.

The prosecutor pressed King to concede that there was no indication that Crumbley “engaged in unusual behavior that would be typical of psychosis in or around” the shooting.

King responded:

“We all saw the video, sir. We saw the video from the night before. We listened to him saying, ‘I am the demon.’ … For someone to verbalize that tells me that person has a serious disorder.”

The prosecutor challenged much of King’s testimony as part of a broader effort to show — as the prosecution believes — that Crumbley was not insane at the time of the shooting, and knew right from wrong.

Psychologist: Crumbley 'can be considered a feral child'

Prior to Crumbley pleading guilty, experts found Crumbley to be competent and not criminally insane. The defense then dropped its plan to pursue an insanity defense

The prosecution also grilled King about Crumbley’s behavior after he carried out the shooting and surrendered, noting he didn’t mention demons or delusions, followed commands and behaved in a coherent manner.

King responded: “The entire courtroom watched five videos of Ethan Crumbley in psychosis.”

But that wasn’t at the time of the shooting, the prosecutor said, noting the video of Crumbley saying “sorry” and pleading to “God” was taken long after the shooting.

King, though, persisted: "His obsessive thoughts and compulsion propelled him to take the lives of innocent people.”

When asked what Crumbley was obsessed with, King replied: harming people.

King, who spent more than 22 hours over six sessions with Crumbley about a year after the shooting, maintains that Crumbley is “absolutely” capable of rehabilitation, noting that the brain has the ability to generate new pathways. For example, he said, stroke victims can learn how to walk and talk again.

“Ethan’s brain is still maturing, and will not reach full maturity for another 10 years,” King testified.

King also discussed the phenomenon of the “feral child” in reference to Crumbley, defining a feral child as someone isolated from others, turning into a misfit of society, with a lack of social cues.

“Psychologically and socially, he can be considered a feral child,” King testified.

King wrote a 70-page report that reviewed Crumbley’s childhood, the influence of his parents, Oxford’s school system and the events leading up to the shooting, including the death of Crumbley's dog. The teen, he said, was the one who had to dispose of the animal.

King also testified about Crumbley’s obsession with torturing and killing baby birds. Prosecutors showed a video Crumbley made of himself killing a bird, and text messages to a friend about wanting to do it again.

“He wanted them to feel the pain that he was feeling inside," King said. "He was actually speaking to them in a different tone of voice, almost as a parent talking to a child, almost a reflection of his mental impairment.”

Crumbley expected backpack to be searched

King's testimony also touched on Crumbley's backpack, which was never checked at school on the morning of the shooting, and that Crumbley expected that it would be. Crumbley and his parents were called to the school office shortly before the rampage over disturbing drawings and writing that a teacher reported.

Crumbley explained to King that after he was called down to his office, he left his backpack in his classroom and then a school administrator went to retrieve it.

"He felt fairly sure that they were going to search his backpack,” King testified before suggesting the school administrator mishandled the situation. “All he had to do was unzip that backpack, but he didn’t.”

'Constant family discord and dysfunction'

A video of Crumbley collapsing in a diner in 2020 — one year before the shooting — also was shown in court Tuesday, suggesting that the boy may have suffered a brain injury. He collapsed on a tile floor, and could not get up on his own, according to a psychologist's testimony.

The parents told the diner owner not to call 911, King testified.

Crumbley also disclosed to the psychologist that he was once out with his parents picking strawberries and he fell. All that he remembers was regaining consciousness. He asked his parents what happened. Crumbley told King that his parents said he suffered a blow to the head. He was not taken to a hospital.

King also testified that there seemed to be discord between the parents.

"There (were) frequent harsh discussions about infidelity, suicide and which parent Ethan needed to choose in the event that they separated," King testified.

He added: "There was constant family discord and dysfunction. There was no indication that he was ever taken to a doctor."

Young Crumbley left alone, sought neighbors' help

The morning began with testimony about Crumbley's childhood, and how he was left alone often starting when he was 6 years old.

According to King, Crumbley, at the age of 6, would wander to neighbors' homes when there was a thunderstorm, tell them he was afraid and would ask for help. At 10, Crumbley would text his mom when he was home alone, but she would not respond, he said.

More: Ethan Crumbley's former neighbor opens up: He ‘didn’t have a prayer as a child’

"I saw that as early as age 10, even age 6, there were some issues," King testified, adding video games were also a theme in young Crumbley's life.

"In my interviews, he explained that he spent countless hours watching various adult games," he testified. "He also spent an inordinate amount of time going to websites (with) graphic scenes. He began to fantasize being part of those scenes."

"Ethan said that at age 6, he went up to a preschool worker and said, 'Wouldn’t it be cool if cars can just crash into this school and kill a lot of people,' " King said.

King disclosed this incident while explaining why he disagreed with another expert's report that Crumbley did not suffer from mental illness.

"If someone tells you, 'I'm seeing things … there's a demon in my house' … that's mental illness. Mental illness is real," King said.

King's testimony followed that of numerous prosecution witnesses who last week offered chilling accounts about the horror Crumbley subjected them to during his rampage. The witnesses included a teacher who was shot in the arm; a student who managed to escape after Crumbley ordered him out of a bathroom stall to go stand by Justin Shilling, whom he had just fatally shot and lay dead in a pool of blood on the tile floor; and an assistant principal who encountered Crumbley in the hallway before trying to revive on one of his victims, Tate Myre, who died of a gunshot wound to the back of the head.

The witnesses testified at what is known as a Miller hearing, a mandatory proceeding offered to juvenile defendants facing life without parole. In a 2012 ruling in Miller v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court held that mandatory life without parole sentences are unconstitutional and amount to cruel and unusual punishment, and that such sentences should not be automatic without a hearing.

Crumbley's Miller hearing has been postponed to Aug. 18, when the prosecution is expected to present one more witness. Oakland County Circuit Judge Kwame Rowe is expected to issue a written ruling shortly after the hearing and will schedule formal sentencing after that.

Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com; Lily Altavena: laltavena@freepress.com. Mandi Wright contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: School shooter Ethan Crumbley breaks down in jail: 'I'm sorry, God'