Shooter’s parents get 10 years in prison

Mom, dad of Michigan teen involved in school attack ‘could have halted’ him

The first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison Tuesday as a Michigan 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.”

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 — he called it his “beauty” — 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 at home and acting indifferently to signs of Ethan’s deteriorating mental health, especially when confronted with a chilling classroom drawing earlier that day.

The Crumbleys were convicted of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year.

“The blood of our children is on your hands, too,” Craig Shilling said during Tuesday’s 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, “I was helping her finish her college essays.”

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.