Cases widen scope of accountability
Prosecutors now taking aim at those who failed to act before shootings
In Virginia, an assistant principal is charged with child abuse after failing to intervene before a 6-year-old shot his first-grade teacher.
In Michigan, a couple is sentenced to a decade in prison for failing to stop their 15-year-old son from gunning down four high-school classmates.
And in Illinois, a father pleads guilty to reckless misconduct after his son killed seven people at a July 4 parade.
The cases represent a new type of weapon in the country’s gun violence epidemic: a prosecutorial one. New legal approaches and laws are widening the scope of accountability for those who not only pull triggers, but also for educators, parents and others who fail to report red flags.
Prosecutors and lawmakers are increasingly taking aim at people who could have taken steps before innocent victims were maimed or killed.
“As far as I know, this is really groundbreaking,” said James Ellenson, a lawyer for Deja Taylor, the mother of the 6-year-old boy who shot his teacher in Virginia, speaking about the criminal charges against the school official in the case. A special grand jury released a report Wednesday outlining failures by the school administration.
For decades, parents of school shooting victims and gun control advocates have looked to Congress to pass legislation that would prevent mass shootings by regulating firearms. But those proposals have largely failed amid backlash from gun rights advocacy and special interest groups, conservative lawmakers and American gun owners.
Now, prosecutors are stepping in. And while it is still rare for the parents or guardians of a shooting suspect to be charged, the successful outcome of the prosecutions could encourage other prosecutors to pursue similar cases, legal experts told USA TODAY.
It’s too early to tell if similar prosecutions will be commonplace, but it could make gun owners think twice about who they allow access to their firearms, said Eric Johnson, a criminal law professor at the University of Illinois College of Law.
“Generally I think the (Michigan) cases are a step in the right direction,” Johnson said. “If you are reckless or criminally negligent in providing someone access to a firearm and that person winds up killing someone, I don’t think you shouldn’t be held liable.”
Lack of response ‘shocking’
A special grand jury released a scathing report Wednesday detailing former assistant principal Ebony Parker’s criminal liability in the Virginia case, where a 6-year-old boy shot and seriously wounded teacher Abby Zwerner in a classroom of 15 children.
“Dr. Parker’s lack of response and initiative given the seriousness of the information she had received on January 6, 2023 is shocking,” the report reads. It says Parker is responsible for “poor decisions” regarding the child’s behavior.
The report blames Parker for not prorespond
viding the child with behavioral resources sooner and dismissing Zwerner’s safety concerns. Parker committed “a willful act or omission in the care of such students” that was “so gross, wanton, and culpable as to show a reckless disregard for human life,” according to an indictment.
During the 2021-22 school year, the child exhibited many behavioral problems, according to the grand jury report. In an incident on Sept. 27, 2021, the child allegedly choked his kindergarten teacher “so hard she couldn’t breathe,” the report says.
Over his kindergarten year, the boy also would occasionally hit a counselor, kick and spit on a teacher assistant, and brag about smoking his mother’s marijuana, according to the report. But administrators failed to initiate a “Functional Behavioral Assessment or Behavior Intervention Plan” during this time, despite school counselors having to frequently help the boy’s kindergarten teacher with his behavior, the it says.
On the day of the shooting, the report says, Parker ignored multiple warnings that the boy was carrying a gun and that he had been in a “violent mood.”
The report says that Parker “did not ... did not acknowledge Zwerner’s presence” when the teacher reported the child’s behavior that day. When concerns were raised that the gun may have been in the boy’s pocket, Parker said the boy had “little pockets” and took no further action, the report says.
‘An inflection point’
At least one other person knew about the shooter’s plans but failed to report it in 4 out of 5 school shootings, according to Sandy Hook Promise, an advocacy group that grew out of a 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and 6 adults.
“We have reached an inflection point in recognizing that we all have something to do with keeping our communities safe from gun violence,” said Nick Suplina, a senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety.
An analysis by researchers with the National Institute of Justice shows that 80% of people who committed school shootings used a firearm belonging to a family member. An analysis by the same group shows that in the six mass school shootings and 39 attempted mass school shootings in the two decades between 1999 and 2019, more than 9 in 10 shooters were current or former students at the school.
Separate juries and a judge found Michigan parents Jennifer Crumbley and James Crumbley at least partly responsible when their son, Ethan Crumbley, shot and killed four fellow students at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021. Prosecutors said they bought their son the murder weapon as a Christmas present and ignored that he was troubled.
They were found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison on Tuesday. They are the first parents of a mass school shooter in the U.S. to be convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
Their case could signal to prosecutors that cases could be brought against parents and caregivers, particularly in the 26 states that have laws requiring safe storage of firearms, Suplina said.
Kunasek thought the 2018 deal, reached after he left office, gave the team an incentive to run down the ballpark.
“It’s more in their interest to let the wheels run off, to have it falling apart at the end of the lease, so that we’re not looking at refurbishment, we’re looking at replacement,” he said in March.
In the years since, the team has spent just $10.7 million out of the county reserve fund dedicated to maintenance, according to the county’s quarterly financial reports.
Hall said the team didn’t want to plow millions into a facility it might abandon. Nonetheless, he said the team has invested about $100 million overall into Chase Field improvements, such as new LED boards and refurbished concession stands. The team didn’t provide receipts to back up its spending. County documents show that between 2009 and 2015, the team pitched in more than $5.2 million toward maintenance and upgrades.
“We’ve put in as much money into the facility as the taxpayers did,” Hall said, referring to the $116 million payment and subsequent investments.
Chucri, who helped engineer the settlement agreement, agreed the team ponied up.
“They haven’t run it into the ground,” he said. “I never believed that argument, because they have just as much to lose in the sense of customer or fan experience.”
Both sides describe improved relations in recent years. And that brings its own set of concerns in an election year. A change in county or city leadership could plunge that progress into unknown waters, adding urgency to the pace of talks for the team.
“It’s a concern,” Hall said. “I think it makes a lot of sense to try and get something done before we have new electeds.”
Everyone has a wish list
While details of discussions remain private, no mystery surrounds what the parties want.
The Diamondbacks laid out their wish list in a report sent to Henderson, Nevada officials in 2016.
It included a smaller, more intimate ballpark, ample parking and an on-site concert hall. Critically, the team wanted homes, shops and restaurants clustered around the ballpark, a growing trend among pro sports teams because it guarantees extra revenue and entices fans. In recent years, the team has softened its stance on a smaller venue.
Phoenix has a similar vision. It wants a downtown entertainment district to become a national destination.
The city paid for a study of the entertainment district, pegged to its hope of redeveloping the Phoenix Convention Center’s south building to include a hotel, residential units, restaurants and shops on the ground level oriented toward Chase Field.
In 2016, former Mayor Greg Stanton promoted the idea of a “sports entertainment complex.” He said he wanted “as much activity as possible” at the ballpark. “I don’t want to lose the Diamondbacks.“
How could it work?
Talks, for now, are in early stages. Nothing is off the table, but all signs point toward some kind of partnership to keep the Snakes at Chase.
Options abound: The Diamondbacks could leave Arizona, move somewhere else in metro Phoenix, refurbish Chase Field or rebuild it. They could renew the tenant-landlord agreement with the county, enter a similar deal with Phoenix, enter a three-way partnership or create a new sports authority. Ownership of the land under Chase Field can be sold, transferred or traded. The cost of improvements could be shared, or funded by development, bonds, private equity, loans or a new tax district.
Hall said he hopes any new agreement includes the city, county and state. He pointed to the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority used at the Cardinals stadium as “a great model.”
The Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority allows the recapture of tax revenue generated by the Cardinals‘ operations to fund State Farm Stadium’s maintenance. That applies to state income taxes paid by Cardinals’ players and staff.
“We’re willing to put the majority of our own money into the stadium and all of its needs. We just feel like there should be some sort of a partnership,” Hall said.
Hall said he’d be open to other tax recaptures, too, such as using hotel taxes, which target tourists.
Another option comes from a 2021 law that allows for surcharge on sales made in the ballpark. Revenues from an additional 1% to 9% surcharge could pay back bonds to improve or maintain the ballpark, as long as they’re collected in a special tax district.
Hall told The Republic he has no interest in using the tax district, saying, “I don’t want to stick it to our fans.”
Another option is transferring ballpark ownership.
DiCiccio said he tried to negotiate a deal with Supervisor Clint Hickman in which the county would transfer Chase Field to Phoenix for free. The city would help pay to demolish or downsize the ballpark and rezone the land so the team could build an adjacent hotel, and conceptually the team would pay for most of the work, DiCiccio said.
Stanton echoed similar ideas on “Arizona Horizon” in 2016, when private investors considered buying Chase Field for $60 million.
Stanton said acquiring the site only made sense “if they look at it as an opportunity to do things like hotels or offices or other condominiums and residential retail.”
There’s also the option of building on the existing 2018 agreement between the county and the team, which Chucri said wasn’t perfect, but “has set a path of success for the team.”
What’s happening at other stadiums
The Diamondbacks aren’t the first MLB franchise to parley an expiring lease into leverage. In the 1980s and 1990s, eight new MLB ballparks opened. Most of those teams had 30-year leases, which are nearing their ends.
Victor Matheson, a professor who specializes in sports economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, said a lease expiration “transfers a gigantic amount of bargaining power ... to the team.”
Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays, began hosting baseball the
same year as Chase Field, 1998. In late 2023, the Rays and St. Petersburg, Florida, announced plans for the team to leave Tropicana Field for a new stadium nearby.
The new facility is expected to cost $1.3 billion as part of a $6 billion mixeduse development. Pinellas County and St. Petersburg will fund $600 million, and the rest comes from the team.
But spending hundreds of millions of public dollars on a stadium doesn’t guarantee a public benefit, sports economists said.
“Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking stadiums automatically make money hand over fist for the cities,” Matheson said. “The way it usually works is the taxpayers end up taking a bath.”
JC Bradbury, a professor who specializes in sports economics at Kennesaw State University in Georgia agrees, noting the public has become more jaded by propping up stadiums with their taxes.
Still, there has been about a 20% increase in public spending in stadiums over the past decade, he said.
“Team owners have learned that if they ask politicians for things, they will get them,” Bradbury said.
But a prominent local economist who studies the economic impact of major events said such critiques oversimplify the issue.
“Downtown Phoenix, in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, was an absolute ghost town,” said Dennis Hoffman, economics professor and director of the Seidman Research Center at Arizona State University, recalling the area shutting down in the summer.
“Take a picture of downtown Phoenix in 1993 and take a picture of it in 2003,” he said. “It’s transformational.”
Today, the arching retractable roof over Chase Field remains a landmark and a symbol of that transformation.
But that roof also symbolizes the challenge ahead. Officials called off an exhibition game after six innings against the Cleveland Guardians in late March when they couldn’t close the roof safely with fans inside.
It was a rainout, the ballpark’s first for baseball.
Soggy fans were left to hope Hall’s words come true when he told The Republic a week earlier: “We do have a solution for that. It’s probably not going to be in place until the next season.”
Sasha Hupka covers county government and regional issues for The Arizona Republic. Do you have a tip to share? Reach her at sasha.hupka@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @SashaHupka. Follow her on Threads: @sashahupkasnaps.
Taylor Seely covers Phoenix for The Arizona Republic/azcentral.com. Reach her at tseely@arizonarepublic.com or by phone at 480-476-6116.
Corina Vanek covers development and business for the Arizona Republic. Reach her at cvanek@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @CorinaVanek.