For the first time in the USA a parent has been convicted of manslaughter for a shooting committed by his minor child in a school. The reason? For having given him the weapon together with her husband, ignoring the signs of the violence that she could have committed, and that she did.
A ruling that could have far-reaching effects in a country where 80% of the weapons used by students in massacres are taken from their homes or those of relatives and friends.
It was a jury in Pontiac, Michigan, that pronounced the guilty verdict against 45-year-old Jennifer Crumbley. In 2021, her son Ethan, at just 15 years old, took the gun hidden in his backpack to school and fired at his classmates at Oxford High School, killing four between the ages of 14 and 17. Having pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and other charges, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole in December. The sentence for the mother will be established on April 9th.
Meanwhile, the father, 47-year-old James Crumbley, will also be tried in March for the same charges of involuntary manslaughter: both parents risk up to 15 years in prison. For the public prosecutor, Jennifer Crumbley failed in her “fundamental duty of vigilance”, which could have prevented the massacre. She «she could have searched his backpack, she could have asked her son where the gun was. She could have locked up the ammunition and the gun. She could have told the school that they would give him a gun. She could have talked about the crisis that her son had previously gone through and her request for help”, thundered the prosecutor.
The defense cited the “unforeseeable” nature of the tragedy. “Can all parents be responsible for everything their children do?” asked lawyer Shannon Smith, saying he was concerned about a “very dangerous procedure for all parents and one of the first of its kind”. Jennifer Crumbley testified that her husband brought home the Sig Sauer 9mm pistol a few days before the shooting as an early Christmas present and that she accompanied her son to the shooting range the next day.
«As a parent you spend your life protecting your child from harm. You never imagine having to stop him from harming someone else”, he specified. Yet the reconstruction of what happened is dismaying. Ethan used a gun that his father had purchased with him four days earlier. Shortly after, he posted a photo of the weapon on his social media accounts, writing, “I just got my beauty today,” with a heart emoji. The boy also recorded a video on his cell phone announcing that he was going to launch an attack at school the next day, but he did not post it.
The behavior of the parents is also disturbing. The day before the massacre, the mother was contacted by the school because a teacher had discovered that the student was looking for ammunition on his mobile phone. “I'm not mad at you, but you have to learn not to let yourself be seen,” was the woman's response in a text message to her son. The following day, however, the couple refused to take the boy home after a meeting with the school staff in which concerns were expressed about the violent drawings he had made: a gun and a bullet, with the words “blood everywhere”, but also comments like “”my life is useless”, the world is dead”. The two did not ask their son for the gun (kept at home in an unlocked drawer) nor checked his backpack, leaving it at school. Shortly after the tragedy, with Ethan who, having emerged from a bathroom, began shooting in the corridor.
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