NEW YORK – Sentenced to 10-15 years in prison (the judge will decide exactly at a later time) for failing to prevent their fifteen-year-old son from carrying out a massacre: it is the first time in the United States that parents have been found criminally responsible for the actions of a minor. It was November 2021 when Ethan Crumbley started shooting in the corridors of Oxford High School, 40 kilometers north of Detroit, killing four classmates and wounding six others plus a teacher with the weapon received as a gift from mom and dad.
Now James and Jennifer Crumbley have been convicted of manslaughter in separate trials. Ethan had already pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence. What was accepted for the couple was the request of the public prosecutor who had asked for a sentence well above the minimum recommended by the state which ranges from 43 to 86 months, citing what was defined as “lack of remorse”, together with certain comments threats directed at the district attorney made by James from the prison phone. During the trial, the two were described as “indifferent to the deterioration of their son’s mental state”. Guilty of not even trying to keep the weapon used safe. Their situation was certainly made worse by their escape following the massacre. When they left their son in prison for days, making themselves unavailable only to be arrested following a tip-off.
Surely, they knew that the boy had gone to school armed. A few hours before the massacre, the couple had been summoned by the school directors together with the boy to discuss certain suspicious behaviors on his part. They had numerous reasons. A few days earlier, Ehtan had posted the image of the new family weapon on social media: “I just got this beauty.” A professor then caught him while he was trying to buy ammunition with his cell phone. And a few hours before the shooting – when the decision was made to have the family intervene – another teacher had found him a drawing showing weapons, ammunition, bodies and the words “blood everywhere”. Ethan had also recorded a video on his cell phone announcing that he was going to launch an attack at school the next day. But then he hadn’t posted it.
At the time of their summons James and Jennifer had already realized that the weapon was not in the house. Yet, they had not notified the school, nor had they asked their son for an account or even checked his backpack. Even refusing the school’s invitation to take him home to discuss his violent impulses. Indeed, shortly afterwards his mother sent him a text message that read: “You have to learn not to let yourself be seen”. The boy, warned, then returned to class. Shortly afterwards he went to the bathroom, took the loaded gun out of his backpack, and started shooting in the corridor, while in the rest of the school everyone barricaded themselves in the classrooms.
