The father of a Michigan high school shooter was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter Thursday, a second conviction against the teenager's parents who were accused of failing to secure a gun at home and doing nothing to address acute signs of his mental turmoil. The jury verdict means James Crumbley has joined Jennifer Crumbley as a cause of the killing of four students at Oxford High School in 2021, even without pulling the trigger. They had separate trials as the first US parents to be charged in a mass school shooting committed by their child, the AP reports. Jennifer Crumbley was convicted of involuntary manslaughter last month.
Ethan Crumbley took a gun from home and killed four students at his school on Nov. 30, 2021. During a five-day trial, prosecutors showed that the gun was not safely secured at the Crumbley home. While Michigan didn't have a storage law at that time, James Crumbley had a "legal duty" to protect others from possible harm by his son, prosecutor Karen McDonald said during closing arguments Wednesday. The case, she said, was about more than just access to a gun. The teenager's mental state was slipping on the day of the shooting: He made a macabre drawing of a gun and a wounded man on a math assignment and added, "The thoughts won't stop. Help me. Blood everywhere. The world is dead."
But his parents declined to take Ethan, 15, home following a brief meeting at the school, accepting only a list of mental health providers as they returned to work. They didn't tell school staff that a handgun similar to one in the drawing had been purchased by James Crumbley just four days earlier. Ethan Crumbley pulled the gun from his backpack a few hours later and began shooting. No one had checked the bag. The Oxford victims were Justin Shilling, 17; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Tate Myre, 16.
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