Mother of teenage school shooter on trial for involuntary manslaughter in first case of its kind
The mother of a teenage gunman in a school shooting went on trial for involuntary manslaughter in a first-of-its-kind case on Tuesday.
Jennifer Crumbley and her husband, James, are accused of giving their son Ethan a semi-automatic handgun and ignoring warnings about his mental health days before he went on a deadly rampage three years ago.
Ethan Crumbley, then 15, murdered four students and injured seven others when he opened fire at Oxford High School on Nov 30 2021 in Detroit, Michigan.
He was sentenced to life in prison in December 2023, aged 17, after pleading guilty to murder, terrorism and other crimes.
Prosecutors claimed his parents had failed to secure the gun he used to carry out the attack and declined to take him home when confronted with his violent drawings at school on the day of the shooting spree.
The landmark case marks the first time prosecutors have tried to hold parents criminally liable for an intentional mass shooting by their child.
Mrs Crumbley has pleaded not guilty, as has her husband, who faces the same charges and will go on trial in March 2024. The couple have been in jail for more than two years awaiting trial, unable to afford a $500,000 (£394,850) bond each.
Their lawyers have argued they had no indication that their son was capable of such violence and the charges equate to trying to put a “square peg into a round hole”.
Mr Crumbley, 47, bought his son the semi-automatic handgun four days before the shooting, which Ethan referred to as “my new beauty”.
State law prohibits those under 18 years of age from buying or possessing firearms except in limited circumstances such as hunting with a licence and a supervising adult.
After Mr Crumbley bought the firearm, his wife, 45, took their son to a local shooting range. She described the outing on Instagram as a “mom and son day”.
The day before his attack, the school told Mrs Crumbley her son had been looking at ammunition on his phone. “LOL I’m not mad at you,” she texted him. “You have to learn not to get caught.”
The following day, Mr and Mrs Crumbley were summoned to the school after their son had drawn violent images on a maths assignment with the message: “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”
The parents were told to get him counselling but they declined to remove him from school and left after less than 30 minutes, according to investigators.
Using the weapon, Ethan then carried out the worst school shooting in Michigan history.
His parents were charged a few days later after they were found hiding in a building in Detroit.
“This tragedy could have been prevented if the shooter’s parents hadn’t played a central role in acquiring the gun for the shooter, or if his parents had taken basic steps to securely store the gun,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice-president of law and policy at the anti-gun violence non-profit Everytown for Gun Safety. “They should be held accountable.”
Involuntary manslaughter carries a maximum jail term of 15 years in Michigan.
“After every school shooting, the media and those affected are quick to point to so-called ‘red flags’ that were missed by those in the shooter’s life,” defence lawyers Shannon Smith and Mariell Lehman said previously in an unsuccessful effort to get the Michigan Supreme Court to dismiss the charges.
“But the truth of the matter is one cannot predict the unimaginable.”
Also on Tuesday an “armed and dangerous” suspect being sought over eight murders in Illinois died after shooting himself following a confrontation with US marshals in Texas.
Romeo Nance, 23, was tracked down near Natalia, outside San Antonio, after a manhunt that began on Sunday hundreds of miles away.
He had been named as a suspect in seven fatal shootings in two homes in Joliet, about 35 miles south-west of Chicago. Police believe he was also responsible for another murder before fleeing the area.
A motive for the killings had not yet been established.
