Dad who bought gun used by school shooter guilty of manslaughter

A man in glasses and a suit walks into a wood-paneled courtroom.

By ED WHITE

March 14, 2024 Updated 8:19 PM PT

PONTIAC, Mich. — The father of a Michigan school shooter was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, a second conviction against the teen’s parents who were accused of failing to secure a gun at home or to address acute signs of his mental turmoil.

The jury verdict on Thursday means James Crumbley has joined Jennifer Crumbley in partial responsibility for the killing of four students at Oxford High School in 2021.

They were the first U.S. parents to be charged in a mass school shooting committed by their child. Jennifer Crumbley was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in February in a separate trial. Their son, Ethan, now 17, is serving a life sentence for murder and terrorism, with no chance of parole.

James Crumbley, 47, slowly shook his head as the jury foreman read the verdicts — one each for the four victims. Family of some of the fallen students wept quietly and gripped one another’s hands in the courtroom.

“This verdict does not bring back their children,” county prosecutor Karen McDonald said of the families, “but it does mark a moment of accountability and will hopefully be another step to address and end gun violence.”

Defense attorney Mariell Lehman said James Crumbley “obviously feels terrible” about what happened at the school. The Crumbleys each face a possible minimum sentence of as much as10 years in prison when they return to court April 9.

“While we are disappointed with the verdict, we know that the jury had a very difficult task in front of them,” Lehman told the Associated Press.

Prosecutors focused on two key themes at the father’s trial: the parents’ response to a drawing on Ethan Crumbley’s math assignment a few hours before the shooting, and the teen’s access to a Sig Sauer 9-millimeter handgun bought by James Crumbley four days earlier.Ethan, then 15, drew a gun and a wounded man on the math assignment with the words, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me. My life is useless.”

James and Jennifer Crumbley declined to take Ethan home after a brief meeting at the school, and staff didn’t demand it. Counselor Shawn Hopkins, concerned about suicidal ideation, told them to seek help for Ethan within 48 hours.

Ethan had told Hopkins that he was sad over the death of his dog and grandmother and the loss of a friend who had abruptly moved away. He said the drawing was simply his jottings for a video game and that he wasn’t planning to commit violence.

Neither he nor his parents told school officials about the gun they had just bought, according to trial testimony. Neither parents nor officials searched the teen’s backpack, though a school administrator had joked about its heaviness.

Hopkins had hoped Ethan would spend the day with his parents. But when that was ruled out, the counselor felt the teen probably would be safer around others at school.

Ethan later pulled the Sig Sauer from his backpack and shot and killed Justin Shilling, 17; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Tate Myre, 16.

“James Crumbley is not on trial for what his son did,” McDonald told the jury. “James Crumbley is on trial for what he did and for what he didn’t do.” He “doesn’t get a pass because somebody else” actually pulled the trigger, she said.

When James Crumbley heard about the shooting, he rushed home from his DoorDash job and looked for the gun. “I think my son took the gun,” he said in a frantic 911 call.

Investigators found an empty gun case and empty ammunition box on the parents’ bed. A cable that could have locked the gun was still in a package, unopened.

Ethan told a judge when he pleaded guilty that the gun was not locked when he stuffed it in his backpack before school.

Defense attorney Mariell Lehman told jurors that James Crumbley did not consent to any gun access by his son.

“He did not know he had to protect others from his son,” she said. “He did not know that it was reasonably foreseeable that his son would commit these offenses. He had no idea what his son was planning to do.”

The judge allowed the jury to see excerpts from the teen’s handwritten journal. “I have zero help for my mental problems and it’s causing me to shoot up the ... school,” Ethan wrote. “I want help but my parents don’t listen to me so I can’t get any help.”

After the verdict, Steve St. Juliana, whose daughter Hana was killed, said more must be done to address gun violence.

“Our children are dying on a daily basis in mass murders, and we do very little about it,” he said. “We complain about 2nd Amendment rights, or we say, ‘Well, there’s not enough money for mental health issues.’ ... We do not want any other parents to go through what we have gone through.”

White writes for the Associated Press.