YOU’RE GUILTY TOO, MA
Mother of Mich. school shooter convicted of involuntary manslaughter
Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley, was convicted Tuesday on four counts of involuntary manslaughter on the second day of deliberations.
It is the first time in U.S. history that a parent has been held criminally responsible for their child’s school shooting.
Prosecutors were able to prove that Crumbley, 45, ignored clear evidence of her son’s mental troubles and failed to heed obvious signals of the violence.
As the jury was polled and confirmed its guilty verdicts — one for each victim — Crumbley looked down and shook her head slightly.
The jurors deliberated for 11 hours, beginning Monday, and asked two questions during their intense debate. Oakland County Judge Cheryl Matthews thanked the six men and six women who served on the jury.
Crumbley and her husband, James, bought Ethan a gun on Nov. 26, 2021. Four days later, he brought that gun to Oxford High School in the north Detroit suburb of Oxford.
During the school day, a teacher spotted Ethan making terrifying doodles on his paperwork. Administrators called James and Jennifer Crumbley to school and showed them the drawing, which included a gun, a bullet and a person seemingly lying in a pool of blood. Words on the page read: “The thoughts won’t stop” and “Help me.”
But after the meeting, Ethan went right back to class, and the Crumbleys went home. Later that day, he pulled the gun out of his backpack and fatally shot four students.
“He literally drew a picture of what he was going to do,” prosecutor Karen McDonald said in her closing argument. “It says, ‘Help me.’ ”
Crumbley’s defense team focused on the unprecedented nature of the charges, arguing that they were brought for political and media attention.
“Unfortunately, this is a case where the prosecution made a charging decision way too fast,” defense attorney Shannon Smith said, claiming that Ethan Crumbley was a “skilled manipulator.”
After the shooting, James and Jennifer Crumbley briefly disappeared, but they were arrested in early December 2021. They have both been jailed for more than two years, unable to post their $500,000 bond. James’ trial is scheduled for March.
Ethan, who was 15 years old at the time of the shootings, pleaded guilty in October 2022 to terrorism and four counts of first-degree murder, along with several other charges. He is serving a life sentence.
The four victims were Hana St. Juliana, Tate Myre, Justin Shilling and Madisyn Baldwin. In one of his disturbed doodles, Ethan Crumbley had written: “The first victim has to be a pretty girl with a future so she can suffer just like me.” That victim was Hana, who was 14.