Mass school shooter’s parents given 10 years jail for failing to stop ‘runaway train’

Pontiac, Michigan: The first parents convicted in a US mass school shooting have been sentenced to at least 10 years in prison as a judge lamented missed opportunities that could have prevented their teenage son from possessing a gun and killing four students in 2021.

“These convictions are not about poor parenting,” Oakland County Judge Cheryl Matthews said. “These convictions confirm repeated acts, or lack of acts, that could have halted an oncoming runaway train.”

From left, James Crumbley, defence lawyer Mariell Lehman, Jennifer Crumbley, and defence lawyer Shannon Smith await sentencing in Oakland County. Credit: AP

The hearing in a crowded, tense courtroom was the climax of an extraordinary effort to make others besides the 15-year-old attacker criminally responsible for a school shooting.

Jennifer and James Crumbley did not know Ethan Crumbley had a handgun in a backpack when he was dropped off at Oxford High School. But prosecutors convinced jurors the parents still played a disastrous role in the violence.

The Crumbleys were accused of not securing the newly purchased gun – he called it his “beauty” – at home and acting indifferently to signs of Ethan’s deteriorating mental health, especially when confronted with a chilling classroom drawing earlier that same day.

The Crumbleys were convicted of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year.

Parents walk away with their kids from the Meijer’s parking lot, where many students gathered following the mass shooting at Oxford High School.Credit: AP

“The blood of our children is on your hands, too,” Craig Shilling said during the sentencing hearing, wearing a hoodie with the image of son Justin Shilling on his chest.

Nicole Beausoleil, the mother of shooting victim Madisyn Baldwin, told the Crumbleys they had failed at parenting.

“While you were purchasing a gun for your son and leaving it unlocked,” said Beausoleil, one of a handful of Oxford family members who spoke in court, “I was helping her finish her college essays”.

Prosecutor Karen McDonald asked the judge to stretch beyond the sentencing guidelines and order a minimum 10-year prison sentence.

Defence attorneys sought to keep the Crumbleys out of prison, noting they have already spent nearly 2½ years in jail after failing to meet a $US500,000 ($754,000) bond after their arrest.

They will get credit for that jail time and become eligible for parole after serving 10 years in custody. If release from prison is denied, they could be held for up to 15 years.

Five deputies in the suburban Detroit courtroom stood closely over the couple and more lined the walls. James Crumbley, 47, had been recorded in jail making threats toward McDonald.

Before being sentenced, he stood and insisted he did not know his son was deeply troubled.

Nicole Beausoleil, mother of Oxford shooting victim Madisyn Baldwin, during the court hearings.Credit: AP

“My heart is really broken for everybody involved. ... I have cried for you and the loss of your children more times than I can count,” he said.

The couple had separate trials in Oakland County court, 64 kilometres north of Detroit. Jurors saw the teen’s violent drawing on his school assignment and heard testimony about the crucial hours before the attack.

Ethan Crumbley sketched images of a gun, a bullet and a wounded man on a maths paper, accompanied by despondent phrases: “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me. Blood everywhere. My life is useless.”

Ethan had told a counsellor he was sad – a grandmother had died, and his only friend suddenly had moved away – but said the drawing only reflected his interest in creating video games.

Photographs of four students — Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; and Justin Shilling, 17 — sit among bouquets of flowers, teddy bears and other personal items left at the memorial site in December 2021.Credit: AP

His parents were called to a hasty meeting at school that lasted less than 15 minutes. They did not mention that the gun resembled one James Crumbley had purchased just four days earlier, a Sig Sauer 9mm.

School staff did not demand that Ethan go home but were surprised when the Crumbleys did not volunteer it. Instead, they left with a list of mental health providers and said they were returning to work.

Later that day, on November 30, 2021, their son pulled a handgun from his backpack and began shooting, killing Shilling, Baldwin, Tate Myre and Hana St Juliana, and wounding seven other people.

Ethan, now 17, is serving a life sentence for murder and other crimes.

The Crumbleys ignored “things that would make a reasonable person feel the hair on the back of their neck stand up,” the judge said. “Opportunity knocked over and over again — louder and louder — and was ignored. No one answered.”

Jennifer Crumbley, 46, began her remarks by expressing “deepest sorrow” about the shooting. She also said her comment at her trial about looking back and not doing anything differently was “completely misunderstood.”

“My son did seem so normal. I didn’t have a reason to do anything different,” Jennifer Crumbley said.

She blamed the school for not giving her the “bigger picture” about Ethan: sleeping in class, watching a video of a mass shooting, writing negative thoughts about his family.

“The prosecution has tried to mould us into the type of parents society wants to believe are so horrible only a school or mass shooter could be bred from,” Jennifer Crumbley said. “We were good parents. We were the average family.”

During the trials, there was no testimony from specialists about Ethan’s mental health. But the judge, over defence objections, allowed the jury to see excerpts from his journal.

“I have zero help for my mental problems and it’s causing me to shoot up the ... school,” he wrote. “I want help but my parents don’t listen to me so I can’t get any help.”

Relatives of the victims were not impressed by the Crumbleys’ courtroom comments. Beausoleil said they were portraying themselves as victims.

“The remorse that they were showing has nothing to do with taking accountability for their actions,” Steve St. Juliana, the father of Hana, said outside court. “I’m sure they were sad people lost their lives. I’m sure they’re sad their son is in jail, sad they’re in jail. ... What’s important is for them to recognise that they made mistakes.”

AP

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.