Oxford teacher shot by Crumbley testifies: 'Do you know how hard it is to heal from this?'

The scar on her arm is there as a reminder, not that she needs one, not given the terror that Ethan Crumbley put her through on the day he shot up Oxford High School.

"He was aiming to kill me," said teacher Molly Darnell, who spoke publicly for the first time Thursday about the teenage gunman who put a hole through her arm, a person she'd rather forget.

As she said during a hearing that will determine Crumbley's fate, she doesn't pay attention to Crumbleys' life, his past troubles, or anything involving his crime.

"Do you know how hard it is to heal from something like this?" Darnell said while being cross-examined by Crumbley's defense team. "Learning about what happened is not part of my healing process."

More: School shooting video and Ethan Crumbley's own words — 'I am the demon' — shock courtroom

A rush in the hall

Darnell is the only teacher who was shot during the November 2021 massacre that killed four students and injured six other students and Darnell. She is the first victim to testify at Crumbley's so-called Miller hearing, a proceeding during which the judge will determine if life without the possibility of parole is an appropriate sentence for Crumbley, who was 15 when he committed the shooting and has since pleaded guilty.

During her testimony, Darnell became visibly shaken at times as she explained the horror she faced that fall afternoon, when she was in her office going about her normal school day, and chaos erupted.

She noticed a rush of students run past her door.

“There seemed to be like a hype about it, a tone about it that left me concerned,” Darnell testified.

At first, Darnell assumed there had been a fight, so she tried to call the office and it went to voicemail. She then ran outside into the hallway and saw students exiting a door.

Then an announcement came over the intercom. The school was headed into a lockdown, she testified.

Darnell shut her office door and went to get a door security device, which works like a barrier to keep anyone from getting inside. But as she did that, she noticed some movement outside the glass window to one side of her door.

Darnell said she locked eyes with someone in the hallway wearing a mask and dressed in dark colored, baggy, oversized clothing. She didn't recognize the eyes.

Text to husband: 'I love you. Active shooter.'

Then she saw a gun raising up toward her, and jumped to the right.

“I believed he was going to shoot me,” Darnell said.

She heard three shots that she described as “physically” loud.

“I could feel them coming through that door,” Darnell testified, beating her fist to her chest. “It sounded almost like a pop.”

Then her left shoulder moved back, she said, and it felt like someone had burned her with hot water. She noticed her cardigan was ripped.

Darnell then barricaded the door with the security device and a cabinet, crouched behind a filing cabinet and texted her husband: “I love you. Active shooter.”

Darnell realized she was bleeding and used her cardigan to tie a tourniquet above the wound. Eventually, she told another teacher she had been shot and an administrator from the school came to her door. She said she was afraid to open it. Officers showed up and ushered her outside.

She was shot through part of her left arm, about 6 inches from her heart, she testified.

Just last week, Darnell saw the crime scene photo of her door, which had three bullet holes in it, she testified.

“He was aiming to kill me,” said Darnell, who suspected the pattern of the shots meant he was aiming for her head and chest.

More: Families break down as Oxford school shooting video is shown in court

Darnell, who had been with the district since 1998 and spent most of her career as a classroom teacher, has since left her job at Oxford High. At the time of the shooting, she was working as the international baccalaureate coordinator, and eventually returned to visit her office. But now she works as a mentor for the district’s virtual academy.

“I wanted to go back” to the high school, Darnell testified. “I loved the work that I was doing and I wanted to kind of prove that I could go back but it was just too hard to be there."

Crumbley's Miller hearing resumes at 8:30 a.m. Friday. His lawyer argues that life without parole is an unfit punishment for a teenager and that he's capable of being rehabilitated. The prosecutor disagrees, arguing the degree of planning he put into the massacre and his admitted desire to see people suffer warrant the punishment.

Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com; Gina Kaufman: GKaufman@freepress.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Oxford teacher shot by Crumbley: 'Do you know how hard it is to heal'