Shooting in Michigan: the role of parents and the school under the magnifying glass of the investigators

The parents of the teenager who killed four students at a high school in Michigan, in the northern United States, were finally arrested on Saturday. They are charged with manslaughter for letting their son use a weapon given as a gift.

The couple had been actively sought since Friday by the police and the FBI. He was eventually located in an industrial building in Detroit, regarding sixty kilometers from the scene of the shooting. Law enforcement considered James and Jennifer Crumbley to be fugitives following they missed arraignment on Friday followingnoon.

The couple’s lawyers assured Friday that, contrary to what was reported, Ethan Crumbley’s parents were not on the run. “The Crumbleys left the evening of this tragic shooting for their own safety,” they said in a message to AFP on Friday evening. The fact that they withdrew $4,000 and turned off their phones, however, suggested that they were on the run, highlighted on CNN police officers.

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The county prosecutor is interested in the role of the parents: they are each charged with four manslaughters for letting their son use a firearm they had bought, announced Karen McDonald. “These charges are a message for people to understand that from the moment they have a weapon, they are responsible for it,” she added.

Ethan Crumbley, 15, killed four students in cold blood and injured six others as well as a teacher on Tuesday at the high school in Oxford, a small town north of Detroit. The teenager has been charged with “terrorist act” and “murder”, and risks life in prison because he is being prosecuted as an adult. He pleaded not guilty but chose to remain silent. The tragedy has created an atmosphere of psychosis in Michigan, where authorities are “inundated” with messages reporting threats once morest schools.

A weapon as a gift

James Crumbley had bought the previous Friday, the day of the big “Black Friday” promotions, a Sig Sauer semi-automatic pistol as an early Christmas present for his son. After the purchase, the teenager posted images of the gun on social media, calling it a “beauty”. He had recorded a video the day before the shooting on his mobile phone where he announced his intention to use his weapon in high school, without posting it on the internet, according to police information.

The next morning, Ethan Crumbley had been summoned with his parents by the school administration, for having drawn a weapon and a bloody body accompanied by a smiling emoticon, as well as messages evoking death: “Help me, my life is useless, the world is dead, blood everywhere».

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“To think that a parent might read these words knowing that his son had access to a deadly weapon that he had given him is incomprehensible, and I think it is a crime,” said the prosecutor. She also criticizes the parents for not having asked their son at that time where his weapon was, which was in his backpack.

School responsibility

Two hours following the meeting, Ethan Crumbley came out of the toilets, gun in hand, methodically progressing through the halls of the school, shooting at high school students and at the doors of the classrooms where the students had barricaded themselves. He fired at least 30 bullets. According to the police, he had aimed at random, without choosing previously identified victims.

The actions of the high school, Oxford High School, are analyzed. Now, legal experts wonder if the establishment does not hold a responsibility in this tragedy. A question bothers them: how did the teenager manage to return to a classroom despite the concerns aroused by his behavior?

A teacher found the young boy looking for ammunition online. The next day, an alarming note was found in his office: “My thoughts don’t stop. Help me”, tell it New York Times.

School officials then met with the student and his parents. They informed the family that the child needed to be seen quickly by a professional. After his parents refused to take him home, school staff allowed him to stay in the facility.

The future will tell if the administrators are at fault, and if they must answer for their behavior in court. the New York Times asked the investigating prosecutor if her office was interested in the behavior of school officials. Karen M. McDonald responded that the investigation is ongoing.

When the parents refused to take the student home, the school should have reacted, say some lawyers: it was the school’s legal and ethical responsibility to remove him from the classroom and put him in a safe place, for him and for others.

Our editorial following Parkland (2018): Weapons in the United States: a deep wound, a culpable hypocrisy