December 3, 2021

Parents of Michigan School Shooting Suspect Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter

“The facts of this case are so egregious.”

Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald addresses the media in her office, Friday, Dec. 3, 2021, in Pontiac, Michigan. Carlos Osorio/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In a rare move, a prosecutor in Oakland County, Michigan, filed involuntary manslaughter charges against the parents of the 15-year-old student who allegedly shot and killed four of his classmates and wounded seven others at Oxford High School. Allison Anderman, director of local policy at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told the New York Times that she couldn’t think of another time when the parents of a high-profile mass shooting suspect had been criminally charged in connection to the crime.

On Friday, prosecutor Karen D. McDonald filed four involuntary manslaughter charges against James and Jennifer Crumbley, one for each student killed. In a press conference detailing the reasons for the charge, McDonald said that Ethan and his father, James Crumbley, purchased a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol together from a local gun store on Black Friday. After the purchase, Ethan Crumbley reportedly posted a photo of the weapon to social media with a caption reading “just got my new beauty today” along with a heart emoji. Four days later, he allegedly used it to kill four people and injure seven more.

McDonald alleged that at some point prior to the shooting, a teacher had caught Ethan Crumbley searching for ammunition on his phone during class. Crumbley’s parents didn’t respond to two voicemails and an email from school authorities about the incident, but in text messages with her son, Jennifer Crumbley revealed that she’d learned what had happened, according to McDonald. 

“Lol, I’m not mad at you, you have to learn not to get caught,” Jennifer Crumbley allegedly wrote.  

During the press conference, McDonald also outlined a timeline of key events on the day of the shooting: In the morning, one of Ethan Crumbley’s teachers found a drawing on his desk of a semiautomatic, a bullet, and a bleeding figure that so disturbed her she took a photo of it. The drawing allegedly contained the words, “the thoughts won’t stop, help me” and “blood everywhere.” 

James and Jennifer Crumbley were summoned for a meeting with school authorities and their son. The two parents “failed to ask their son if he had his gun with him or where his gun was located and failed to inspect his backpack for the presence of the gun which he had with him,” McDonald said. They also resisted the idea of their son leaving the school. 

When the news of the shooting had been made public, Jennifer Crumbley allegedly texted her son: “Ethan, don’t do it.” James Crumbley later called 9-1-1, saying that a gun was missing from his home and that he believed his son may be the shooter, according to McDonald.

McDonald said that the gun was stored unlocked in James and Jennifer Crumbley’s bedroom. But Michigan is one of many states that lacks a law requiring gun owners to lock away their firearms. Gun control advocates have pushed for such statutes, called child-access prevention laws, but have consistently run into strong opposition from guns rights groups like the National Rifle Association, which instead favor safety campaigns aimed at educating children and their parents. In 2017, NRA spokesperson Jennifer Baker said that her organization opposes “one-size fits all government mandates” and claimed that existing laws are enough. 

“I have tremendous compassion and empathy for parents who have children struggling,” McDonald said during the press conference. “I am, by no means, saying that an active shooter situation should always result in a criminal prosecution against parents. But the facts of this case are so egregious.”

If convicted, James and Jennifer Crumbley could face up to 15 years in prison. 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate