Father of school shooter guilty of manslaughter
PONTIAC, Mich. – James Crumbley, father of a school shooter in Michigan, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter – a second conviction against the parents who were accused of failing to secure a gun at home and doing nothing to address acute signs of their son’s mental turmoil.
Crumbley’s son murdered four students and injured seven other people at Oxford High School in November 2021. James Crumbley and his wife, Jennifer, are the first parents in the nation to be held criminally accountable for a child’s school shooting. In February, Jennifer Crumbley was convicted on involuntary manslaughter charges.
When the jury foreman read the verdicts, the victims’ families heaved sighs of relief. James Crumbley shook his head as each guilty verdict was read. Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald hugged the parents of each victim as they left the courtroom.
“While we are grateful that James and Jennifer Crumbley were found guilty, we want to be very clear that this is just the beginning of our quest for justice and true accountability,” the families of the four slain students said in a joint statement after the verdict came down.
The families have long argued that school officials also were negligent and must be held accountable.
Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, pleaded guilty and is serving life in prison without parole. He killed Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 17.
Over five days of testimony in James Crumbley’s trial, the prosecution and defense hammered away at the same themes they did in his wife’s case.
One side maintained Crumbley was a careless, negligent father who bought a troubled son a gun and failed to secure it. Defense lawyers said the dad never
The eNewspaper is an electronic copy of your print newspaper. Enjoy every page by going to shreveporttimes.com/enewspaper or scan this code on your mobile device. You will also find late news and sports in the bonus sections. Check it out today! saw any signs that his son was mentally ill or would ever harm someone, and that the gun was hidden.
McDonald implored the jury in her closing argument to hold Crumbley accountable for failing to take “tragically small measures” that could have saved the lives of four children.
Crumbley, she stressed, could have put a cable lock on the gun or taken his son home from school when the boy showed signs of desperation in a drawing he made.
But Crumbley did nothing, she said. “He didn’t just fail in his duty to his son,” McDonald said. “He failed in his duty to protect Hana and Justin and
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Task Force One, a federally sponsored Urban Search and Rescue team, to help with search efforts.
“I’m shaken; it’s overwhelming,” said Winchester Mayor Bob McCoy, who took cover in a closet of his home with his family. “I was just stunned because I heard what sounded like a train ... and then my wife got a text from a friend . ... Her parents live down the road and their house was gone.”
In Kentucky, Trimble County Emergency Management
Director Andrew Stark confirmed a tornado had touched down in the town of Milton, just south of Madison, Indiana.
“We think there are over 100 structures that are potentially damaged,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in a statement Thursday night.
Unconfirmed reports of tornadoes also came from Jefferson County, Missouri, and Monroe County, Illinois, and a tornado is suspected to have hit Hot Springs Village, a retirement community about 40 miles southwest of Little Rock, Arkansas.
Contributing: Columbus Dispatch; Louisville Courier Journal; The Associated Press