There are things bigger than politics, state legislators declared on the floor of Michigan’s state House, as legislation to implement school safety requirements and mental health assessment standards passed Tuesday evening with bipartisan support.

It’s been just over three years since by another student who brought a gun to school and opened fire on the school community. Just as the loved ones of Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Justin Shilling, 17; and Madisyn Baldwin, 17, will never forget the pain of the Nov. 30, 2021 killings, neither will lawmakers, Rep. Luke Meerman (R-Coopersville) told members of the state House.

“We must show the people of Michigan, we as lawmakers can come together and produce solutions that address real need in the state,” Meerman, who is a sponsor of the bill package, said. “From where I stand, these bills are long overdue. I’m grateful to vote yes on these bills today.”

Michigan state Rep. Luke Meerman (R-Coopersville) speaks in support of a school safety package on the House floor on Dec. 10, 2024. | Photo: Anna Liz NicholsMeerman, along with Rep. Nancy DeBoer (R-Holland) on House Bills and which would replace the with a School Safety and Mental Health Commission housed in the Department of State Police.

The would-be-replaced School Safety Commission was created under Gov. Rick Snyder, after the deadly Parkland High School shooting in Florida in 2018 where a 19-year-old opened fire, killing 17 people at the school. The commission has been charged with evaluating safety measures in Michigan schools and making recommendations for improvements.

Codifying a School Safety and Mental Health Commission is being pursued by lawmakers in recognition of . The commission would specifically examine and make recommendations to improve school safety measures and mental health support, with members consisting of experts in law enforcement, education, mental health, school threat assessments and community programming with youth, as well as having a current student or recent high school graduate on the commission.

House Bill and House Bill received 89-19 votes, passing with widespread bipartisan support and with two members not voting.

Amongst the “no” votes was Republican Rep. Josh Schriver who represents Oxford and voted against every bill in the package Tuesday

Under House Bills and , all schools in Michigan would be required to adopt uniform terminology for emergency response starting in the 2026-2027 school year.

Michigan State Police would be mandated under the legislation to create language all schools use, so terms like “lockdown” and “shelter in place” mean the same thing across the board and law enforcement can respond accordingly should there be an emergency.

House Bill received a 94-15 and House Bill received a 93-16 with one lawmaker not voting.

In the face of the threat of school shootings, it’s important to note that , Rep. Kelly Breen (D-Novi) told lawmakers Tuesday. But students don’t always feel safe while they’re trying to learn.

“A few years ago, my daughter asked me one of the worst questions a child could bring a parent, ‘Mama, what do I do if my teacher tells me to run and I can’t find my little brother?’,” Breen told members of the state House. “No parent ever wants to answer that.”

Michigan was once again rattled by another school shooting in 2023, when three students on Michigan State University’s campus were killed by a gunman the evening before Valentine’s Day, Breen lamented.

After the tragedy at MSU, lawmakers passed several gun violence reforms including and implementing .

And as survivors of school shootings in Michigan and the families of the students the state has lost demand justice and change, Breen said lawmakers have the opportunity to stand alongside them.

Breen’s bill in the package, House Bill , requires all schools to create a behavior threat assessment and management team by October 1, 2026. The team would have to define prohibited or concerning behaviors that are indicative that a member of the school community might hurt themselves or others. The team would also be expected to perform monitoring for such behaviors, creating reporting mechanisms for members of the school community to identify concerning behavior and facilitate the school’s responses to intervene.

The team is required to have a school administrator, a mental health professional and a school resource officer or another member of law enforcement.

While the other bills in the package cleared the politically divided state House with the vast majority of votes, House Bill cleared with a 57-51 vote, with one lawmaker not voting.

Rep. Gina Johnsen (R-Odessa) unsuccessfully proposed an amendment that would have allowed non public schools to opt out of creating behavior threat assessment and management teams and would have specified that members of the clergy could be eligible to fulfill the role of the mental health professional on such teams if non public schools wanted to participate.

The bills will now head over to the state Senate in the final days of the legislative session.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.

In 12 days, it will be three years since the deadly Oxford High School shooting robbed Michigan of the lives of four students. Parents of the victims of the shooting gathered Monday in Oxford for a news conference to call on the state to open an independent investigation into the events that led to the shooting.

The gunman, who was a student at the school when he opened fired on students and educators on Nov. 30, 2021, was at the end of 2023 for the deaths of four students. The shooter’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were also held legally responsible for the shooting in a landmark criminal prosecution for their role in making it possible for their 15-year-old son to commit a mass shooting. The parents were sentenced earlier this year to 10 to 15 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.

But as other families prepare for Thanksgiving and start early Christmas shopping, parents of the shooting victims are imploring the state to investigate other entities — namely the school’s leadership — into what their role was in not preventing the tragedy.

“We are not going anywhere. We will do whatever it takes to drive change, because it’s not a matter of if a school shooting happens again, but when,” said Steve St. Juliana, father of Hana St. Julianna, a student who was killed in the Oxford shooting at age 14.

It’s not enough that the shooter and his parents have been held criminally responsible. The parents of the victims said much more needs to be done to understand what happened at Oxford and how other families can be spared the pain of another school shooting in the future.

had the school responded appropriately to the shooter as a potential threat as he gave several warning signs, asserted one investigation by Guidepost Solutions which concluded in 2023. Nearly half of the individuals investigators requested to talk to did not speak with investigators. Lawyers for Oxford Community Schools, as well as the teachers union discouraged school employees from cooperating in the investigation, the report said.

To implement real change, not simply gun safety legislation as the Michigan Legislature has enacted, the state must find out exactly what happened that permitted a 15-year-old student to open fire on his classmates and teachers at school where the community should be safe, said Buck Myre, father of Tate Myre who was killed in the shooting at age 16.

“This has always been about change — period — nothing else. It’s time for our state government to investigate this. Stop hiding; stop making excuses. A Michigan public school was the scene of the shooting. Kids’ lives were lost. Kids were shot. A teacher was shot. Every kid in school that day has a shooting badge, a shooting badge that they will heavily carry on their chest for the rest of their lives,” Myre said. “Don’t we want to learn from this?”

There is an epidemic of school shootings that are killing children, St. Juliana said. And if the state doesn’t want more carnage, state agencies need to work together, stop pointing fingers, and get to work on a revelatory investigation.

“We should not have to be sitting up here repeatedly saying, ‘Do a damn investigation.’ I’ll paraphrase the governor of Michigan ‘fix the damn system,’” St. Juliana said, referring to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s signature call to “fix the damn roads.”

“Forget about the roads. Keep our kids safe,” St. Juliana said.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel responded to the parents’ requests for a state investigation, pointing out that her office has offered several times to perform an investigation and the Oxford School Board, Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office and Oakland County Sheriff’s Office have rejected her requests.

The parents of Tate Myre, Hana St. Juliana, Justin Shilling and Madisyn Baldwin are not simply calling for further prosecutions, but for the state to examine the systems that could prevent a future shooting. Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in an emailed statement after the press conference Monday that a comprehensive, state-led investigation has the potential to provide that.

“We are not aware of any mechanism for our office to refer a matter to the Attorney General’s office when it has not been presented to our office,” McDonald said. “And what the families are asking for is much broader. We are not aware of any action needed by my office to activate the Attorney General’s authority, but we will do everything possible to enable such an investigation. And my office will fully cooperate with any such investigation.”

Nessel said the protocol for her office to perform an investigation is to respect local authority, not use her jurisdiction to supersede local or county level criminal investigations. She added that the Attorney General Department will only join or take on leadership of a criminal investigation or prosecution after local authorities have referred the case to her office.

Both McDonald and Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard have her personal phone number, Nessel said, but neither have requested the attorney general’s involvement, although she is still willing to investigate

“We share in the families’ fatigue over the constant finger-pointing and scapegoating in these investigations and wish our offers to participate at any level had been accepted years ago for my office to conduct an investigation,” Nessel said. “At this point, nearly three years after the tragedy [it] will definitely be more difficult than if it had been allowed to begin when our earliest or repeated offers were initially made.”

McDonald sent a letter and legal opinion on Oct. 9 to St. Juliana in response to his and other families asking for criminal charges against Oxford District members. In the documents, which were provided to the Michigan Advance by St. Juliana, McDonald says Nessel has the authority to perform an investigation without an invitation.

“The Attorney General’s Office holds a wide range of powers, which include the investigatory powers that were held at common law. In addition to the investigatory powers, the Attorney General’s office is equipped with its own Criminal Investigations Division — meaning it not only has the authority, but also the resources to investigate potential violations of Michigan law,” McDonald wrote to St. Juliana.

Parents on Monday talked about the Attorney General’s Office’s ability to subpoena some of the individuals within Oxford Schools who did not talk with Guidepost Solutions’ investigation. Nessel addressed what she called confusion over what her office is allowed to do. She said her subpoena power can only be triggered when there is to believe criminal acts were committed.

In McDonald’s letter to St. Juliana, she says although parents have requested charges be filed against individuals at Oxford Schools, she has “not seen evidence that would allow me to bring charges against any of those individuals.”

“… neither my office nor Guidepost can conduct a criminal investigation,” McDonald said in the letter to St. Juliana. “I can only make decisions based on the information provided to me by law enforcement, and Guidepost must rely on the cooperation of individuals who have information to share that information.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on and .

James Crumbley, the father of the Oxford High School shooter, was found guilty Thursday of involuntary manslaughter for his role in the killings of four students in 2021.

The verdict will not bring back anyone’s children, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said at a press conference after the verdict was read, flanked by the parents of the students who were killed.

“I will forever remain in awe of their strength and perseverance that they have shown in the last two and a half years,” McDonald said. “It’s a privilege to do this and we know that it can’t take the pain away, but It’s one small step towards accountability.”

The decision in Crumbley’s case follows the February conviction of Crumbley’s wife, , on the same charges, one involuntary manslaughter charge for each child their son killed. The cases mark the first time in the U.S. parents of a mass shooter have been held directly responsible for the deaths their child caused.

The shooter was sentenced to life without parole in December.

The prosecution had the task of proving that Crumbley’s actions or inactions made the shooting possible, as Crumbley had the legal duty as a parent to prevent his child from harming others and should’ve taken reasonable actions to mitigate possible harm.

Nicole Beausoleil, the mother of Madisyn Baldwin who was killed in the shooting, thanked the other parents standing with her over the course of the two and a half years since the shooting for their friendship and support through all three prosecutions. All four families of the victims are forever changed and will continue fighting for accountability on behalf of their children, she said.

“This is not just a verdict for attention or media,” Beausoleil said at the press conference. “This is a verdict that actually needs to be put to the platform that it is: How are we going to use this verdict to actually make that change?”

For five days, , witnesses relayed the events leading up to and following the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School, as well as the horror and violence individuals faced as James Crumbley’s son opened fired at teachers and students, injuring seven people and killing four of his classmates: Baldwin, Hana St. Julianna, Justin Shilling and Tate Myre.

There were several small actions Crumbley could have taken to prevent the shooting and signs of mental distress from his son that a parent should have acknowledged and sought out help for, McDonald said in her closing arguments Wednesday.

“There were 1,800 students at Oxford High School. There was one parent who suspected that their son was the school shooter and it was James Crumbley,” McDonald said, , telling the operator that a gun was missing from his house.

Crumbley’s lawyer, Mariell Lehman, told the jury during her closing arguments that although the prosecution has shown them “haunting things; tragic things,” they have not shown evidence that Crumbly knew that his son was a danger to others. If they had evidence to prove Crumbley knew what his son was planning, jurors would have seen it.

“The prosecution wants you to find that James could foresee that his son was a danger to others and that James acted in a grossly negligent manner or breached a duty that he owed to other people, despite having no information at the time,” Lehman said during her closing arguments. “You saw no evidence that James had any knowledge that his son was a danger to anyone. You heard no testimony and saw no evidence that James Crumbley knew what his son was planning.”

Crumbley had bought his son the gun used in the shooting four days before the killings, having taken him to the shooting range on several occasions and supervising his usage there.

But during Crumbley’s trial, as well as that of Jennifer Crumbley, questions were raised on .

Ultimately, it would have taken “just one tragically small measure of ordinary care to avoid four deaths” McDonald said calling attention to the meeting the Crumbleys were called to at the school the day of the shooting after the shooter drew a sketch of the gun his father had bought him days prior on his math assignment.

Shawn Hopkins, the school counselor at the meeting the day of the shooting, testified during Jennifer Crumbley’s trial that he was , or that their son would be able to access it. In addition to the drawing of the gun, there was a drawing of a body with blood coming out of it and a few statements including “the thoughts won’t stop” and “help me.”

Hopkins said on Monday that he didn’t tell either parent that they absolutely had to take their son home and the shooter expressed interest in returning class. Hopkins said he did insist that the parents seek out mental health care for their son who had told him that he was experiencing sadness over the recent death of his dog and grandma and was missing his friend who had moved away.

And though neither parent told their son at the meeting that they cared about him after Hopkins told him at the end that he cared about him, Hopkins said James Crumbley did speak to the shooter.

“He was talking to his son and mentioned that, you know, ‘You have people you can talk to; you can talk to your counselor; you have your journal; we talk’ and it felt appropriate at that time,” Hopkins said.

If the shooting had not happened, Hopkins said it was his plan to check in with the shooter to see if his parents had sought out any mental health services for him. And if not, he said he would have called Child Protective Services.

On Tuesday, Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Detective Lt. Timothy Willis offered insight on the shooter’s journal saying that in all the 22 pages the shooter wrote in, he referenced wanting to commit a school shooting. There were also passages where the shooter talks about wanting to get help.

One entry reads: “I have zero HELP for my mental problems and it’s causing me to SHOOT UP THE F—ING SCHOOL.” Another entry reads: “I want help but my parents don’t listen to me so I can’t get any help.”

Later entries chronicle the shooter receiving his gun from Crumbley and detailing his plan to kill people at his school.

Edward Wagrowski, an Oakland County Sheriff’s detective at the time of the shooting, testified last week, showing the jury text messages between the shooter and his friend months before the shooting detailing mental health struggles, including hearing voices.

One text from the shooter reads, “I actually asked my dad to take [me] to the Doctor yesterday but he just gave me some pills and told me to ‘Suck it up.”

If Crumbley had done the simplest of things, as he knew his son was struggling, four kids would still be alive, McDonald said in her closing arguments. If he had listened to his son or read his journal and believed what it said, he could have intervened as the violence his son was planning was foreseeable.

“He sees that drawing that morning when he goes to the school and what does it say? It says, ‘help me.’ How many times does this kid have to say it? He says it in his journal. He says it to his friend and what is he saying? ‘I asked my parents; I asked my dad,’” McDonald said. “And if that isn’t enough, he writes the words “help me” on a piece of paper and his parents, James Crumbley is called to the school to see it and what did he say? He says, ‘We gotta go work.’”

The defense only called on one witness as the burden of proof was not on them. Crumbley’s sister, Karen Crumbley, talked about seeing her brother and nephew, the shooter, in April and then again in the summer, months before the shooting.

Crumbley, who lives in Florida, said she and James Crumbley had been in the hospital with their mother as she was sick at the time. Karen Crumbley said their mother died on April 6, 2021, and the shooter came to Florida to visit shortly after. She didn’t observe anything that would have raised concerns for her.

When she came to Michigan for a summer 2021 visit, she said she didn’t observe anything that gave her reasons to worry about her nephew’s mental state or what kind of care he was receiving from his parents. When asked by the defense if she would have done anything had she observed anything wrong, she said she would have.

“I would have addressed it and if I would have known anything I would have talked to him. I would have took him home with me if there was any kind of inclination that anything was wrong,” Karen Crumbley said. She added that she would have told her brother if she thought something was wrong, but there was nothing she was concerned about.

Moving forward, more needs to be done to address the ways in which children in America are dying from gun violence, Steve St. Juliana, the father of Hana St. Juliana, said at the press conference after the verdict reading. More needs to be done to tackle kids’ declining mental health and other issues and people can’t simply stand behind Second Amendment rights and not talk about what is killing kids.

“We can put people on the moon; we can build skyscrapers, huge monuments like the Hoover Dam and we can’t keep our kids safe in schools?” St. Juliana said. “I think people just need to wake up and take action. Stop accepting the excuses. Stop buying the rhetoric. It is not a Democratic or Republican issue. It’s nonpartisan. Do not accept any excuse from any of the politicians. This needs to be solved and it needs to be solved now. We do not want any other parents to go through what we’ve gone through.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on and .

She had just taken her son out to target practice in what she described on social media as a “mom and son day testing out his new Christmas present:” a 9-millimeter pistol the high schooler referred to online as “My new beauty.”

The images were pivotal to an unprecedented conviction this week that legal scholars predict could create a new tool for prosecutors as the nation looks for ways to stem a record-setting uptick in mass shootings.

“This is the last picture we have of that gun until we see it murder four kids on Nov. 30, and the person holding it is Jennifer Crumbley,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said before a jury convicted the mother on four counts of involuntary manslaughter — one for each of the students her son gunned down at Oxford High School. 

“She’s the last person we see with that gun,” McDonald said. 

Crumbley is the first parent to be held directly responsible for a school shooting carried out by their child, turning on its head a bedrock legal principle: People cannot be held responsible for the actions of others.

“Look, I thought this case could go either way and still when the result came out I was a bit stunned because it’s such a deep legal principle,” Ekow Yankah, a University of Michigan law professor, told The 74.

And if other parents are charged in connection with shootings acted out by their children, Yankah said, the Crumbley conviction may make them more likely to accept a plea deal behind closed doors.

“Prosecutors will be tempted to use this power in ways that we don’t see,” he said. “A prosecutor is going to sit across from a parent when people are crying out for somebody to be held accountable and the prosecutor is going to be able to say, ‘I’m offering you three years to five years in prison, but if you don’t take this deal, I will prosecute for 15 years.’ ” 

For gun control advocates and the parents of children killed in their classrooms, the landmark trial’s outcome was welcomed. Craig Shilling, the father of Oxford shooting victim Justin Shilling, told a local TV station the conviction is “definitely a step towards accountability.” About three-quarters of school shooters obtain their guns from a parent or another close relative, according to a . In about half of cases, the guns had been readily accessible. 

The conviction is in many ways a watershed moment that hinged heavily on portrayals of Crumbley as a neglectful mom who paid more attention to her horses and an affair than to the son she’d gifted a gun to as he struggled with his mental health and exhibited violent behaviors. 

In this case, the gunman was charged as an adult while his mother was found guilty of crimes that stemmed from her role as an egregiously aloof and reckless parent. The gunman pleaded guilty in October 2022 to 24 charges, including first-degree murder and terrorism causing death, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in December. 

The shooter’s father, James Crumbley, is scheduled to face a similar trial next month. 

Yankah, the UMichigan law professor, told The 74 he wasn’t aware of any other cases where a parent was held liable for the crimes of a child who was simultaneously considered “a legal agent” and therefore responsible for his own actions. 

It’s not the first time a parent has been held legally responsible for crimes committed by their children —including in helping their child secure a firearm later used in a mass shooting. Still, experts said the Crumbley case does present a significant escalation in a generations-long push to hold parents accountable for the misdeed of their kids.

One , published in the Utah Law Review in 2008, noted that such efforts appeared cyclical, noting that “every couple of decades or so” lawmakers claimed to “discover” the idea of holding parents to account for teenage crimes. 

Punishing parents

which impose civil or criminal liability on adults under the premise that their failures to take control as parents led to their kids’ bad acts. There is research that ties youth delinquency to poor parenting. 

One recent parental responsibility law, , specifically addressed guns. It imposed civil liability on parents for negligence or willful misconduct if they allow their minor children to use or possess guns if the child has been adjudicated delinquent, was convicted of a crime, has the propensity to commit violence or intends to use the weapon unlawfully. 

Efforts to hold parents accountable for their children’s behaviors are rooted in the very origins of the nation’s juvenile justice system in the early 1900s, which authorized the state to intervene when parents failed in their duties, and their constitutional implications. By the 1970s, the report notes, lawmakers began to place a greater emphasis on parents as a factor in juvenile crime and turned to

Little is known, however, about whether such efforts have been effective in reducing juvenile crime. Eve Brank, a professor of law and psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, told The 74 that she is unaware, after decades of researching the emergence of parental responsibility laws, of “any empirical research that shows that imposing punishments on parents because of the actions of the children will decrease juvenile crime.”

She is also unaware of any data indicating how frequently those laws are used. In 2015, she , who reported infrequent enforcement. Through her research, Brank has identified three types of such laws: civil liability, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and parental involvement. 

Under the statutes, parents can be held responsible for helping or encouraging their child to commit a crime and financially liable for damages. They can also be required to pay fines or attend parenting classes due to their children’s criminal acts. 

Among them are truancy laws, which require students to attend school. In New Jersey, for example, parents who don’t compel their children to attend school can face disorderly conduct charges and fines. Such efforts, however, have been heavily criticized — including during the 2016 presidential election when Vice President Kamala Harris was that imposed jail time and fines on parents in truancy cases while she served as state attorney general. 

In 2017, Pennsylvania lawmakers reformed state truancy rules and made them less punitive after a Reading County woman was found dead in 2014 while serving a two-day jail sentence for her children’s truancy because she was unable to pay a $2,000 fine. 

“Many of those statutes came under a lot of strain in the last say 15 years,” including ones around truancy, Yankah said, adding that people were skeptical about whether they addressed the root causes underlying the social problems they sought to address and could uphold long standing racial disparities in the judicial system. “Frankly, communities of color really learned that — as is so often the case — when we pass more criminal statutes the people who are in the crosshairs are politically vulnerable. It was a lot of Black mothers, and so those statutes kind of faded out of popularity.” 

In some cases, parental responsibility laws have failed under court scrutiny. Among them is an ordinance in Maple Heights, Ohio, that for “failing to supervise a minor” if their child committed what would be considered a misdemeanor or a felony if it had been carried out by an adult. The in 2008 after a parent faced charges after her 17-year-old son was accused in juvenile court of carrying a concealed weapon, resisting arrest and failing to comply with a police officer. 

Meanwhile, officials have also sought to hold parents responsible when their children bully other kids. In 2016, the city council in Shawano, Wisconsin, passed an ordinance that on parents who failed to address their child’s harassment directed at other kids. 

In a high-profile cyberbullying case from 2013, a Florida sheriff bemoaned his of a girl who was charged criminally for harassing a 12-year-old classmate so relentlessly online that it led the girl to die by suicide. Among the harassment was an online message encouraging the 12-year-old to “drink bleach and die,” yet the parents continued to give the bully access to social media. 

“I’m aggravated that the parents aren’t doing what parents should do,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told reporters at the time. “Responsible parents take disciplinary action.” 

A new category of parental responsibility

Crumbley’s conviction, Brank said, “doesn’t fit into any of these categories” of traditional parental responsibility laws and is instead a first-of-its-kind extension of the manslaughter statute. 

As officials seek to crack down on mass shootings, the Crumbley case is one of several recent examples where prosecutors sought to hold parents accountable when their children carried out what once were unthinkable acts of violence.

In December, a Virginia mother was for felony child neglect after her 6-year-old son brought a gun to his Newport News elementary school and shot his first-grade teacher. In a separate prosecution, the mother pleaded guilty to using marijuana while owning a firearm and for making false statements about her drug use. 

In a separate prosecution that may have laid the groundwork for the Crumbley case, to misdemeanor reckless conduct on charges that stemmed from a shooting carried out by his son at a 2022 Highland Park Independence Day parade, which left seven people dead. That case centered on how his son, who was 19 at the time, obtained a gun license. 

At the time of the massacre, the gunman was too young to apply for a firearm license so his father sponsored his application despite knowing his son had a history of behaving violently. Several months before the attack, a relative reported to police that the teenager had a large collection of knives and had threatened to “kill everyone.” 

In the Highland Park case, was explicit: The father’s guilty plea, he said, should be a “beacon” to others that parents can be held accountable for the actions of their children. 

“We’ve laid down a marker to other prosecutors, to other police in this country, to other parents, that they must be held accountable,” Lake County State Attorney Eric Rinehart said. “The risk of potentially losing this innovative prosecution — and not putting down any marker — was too great for our trial team.” 

Yankah said it’s important to look at new parental accountability efforts through their historical contexts. 

“Looking back at history,” he said, “shows us that our historical experiments with this kind of liability for parents has rarely solved the underlying problem,” he said. “Maybe this kind of case will have an effect, maybe parents will be more attentive. But to speak honestly, I think what a case like this shows is how many different things we as a society have to work on if we really want to be free of this violence.”

A Michigan jury found Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the Oxford High School shooter, guilty of involuntary manslaughter Tuesday.

In a , the jury found that Crumbley bore enough responsibility for the deaths caused by her son’s actions that she should be held criminally liable.

At age 15, Crumbley’s son shot and killed four of his classmates at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021, days after his father bought him a gun. Crumbley’s son was sentenced to life without parole in December.

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Crumbley’s husband, James Crumbley, has a separate trial scheduled for March.

After two days of deliberations, a jury in Oakland County Circuit Court in metro Detroit delivered the guilty verdict for Jennifer Crumbley on four counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each of the students killed: Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre, Hana St. Julianna and Justin Shilling.

The jury had been tasked by the court to determine whether Crumbley’s actions warranted involuntary manslaughter charges, which marks new legal ground for determining responsibility for a mass shooting.

Crumbley now faces up to 15 years in prison ahead of her sentencing scheduled for April 9.

Her defense argued during the trial that began on Jan. 25 that Crumbley couldn’t have known what her son was going to do. She was portrayed as an attentive parent who was aware that her son was going through a hard time, but nothing indicated he would become a school shooter.

“It was unforeseeable; no one expected this,” Shannon Smith, a lawyer for Crumbley, said in her closing arguments. “No one could have expected this, including Mrs. Crumbley.”

But the prosecution argued that Crumbley failed as a parent to perform her legal duty to exercise reasonable oversight to her son to prevent him from harming others and was negligent to the point that it harmed human life.

The prosecution proved Crumbley’s role in the shooting and how she could have intervened at several points beforehand to get her son help or secured the firearms in the home, but she didn’t, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in her closing arguments.

“We have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that she is guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter. It’s a rare case. It takes some really egregious facts. It takes the unthinkable and she has done the unthinkable and because of that four kids have died,” McDonald said.

Despite audibly crying at several points throughout the trial, Crumbley didn’t have a substantial reaction to the verdict being read. McDonald and other members of the prosecution hugged family members of the slain children.

In addition to the four students who were killed, the shooter injured six other students and a teacher. Molly Darnell, the teacher who was shot in the arm, was the first witness to testify at the start of the trial in January. A total of 22 witnesses spoke during the trial, including Crumbley, members of law enforcement and people who had interactions with Crumbley.

A major element of the prosecution’s justification for the involuntary manslaughter charges was Crumbley’s actions the day of the shooting after she and her husband were called to the school because the shooter had done a drawing of his gun on his math assignment.

Four days prior, the shooter and his father went to a gun shop and the father purchased the gun used in the killings on Black Friday as an early Christmas present.

After the meeting at the school where Crumbley and her husband were advised to seek out professional help for their son, the prosecution brought in witnesses from the school and law enforcement to show that neither parent took the shooter out of school for the day. Neither parent checked their son’s backpack where he had the gun. And neither parent asked their son where his gun was or checked to see if it was still at home.

There had been other meetings with the shooter’s parents, Shawn Hopkins, the school counselor at the meeting the day of the shooting, said during the trial. He said he was hoping one of the parents would take the shooter home. Although Hopkins didn’t tell them they had to, he thought it was strange they didn’t.

“She sat down in the chair; [I] felt she was a little bit distant. … It felt like it was a little bit of an inconvenience to be there,” Hopkins said of Crumbley during the meeting.

Hopkins said the shooter showed signs of possible suicidal thoughts and he didn’t want him to be alone. Hopkins added that he did not know that the shooter’s father had bought him a gun.

In addition to the drawing of a gun, the shooter’s assignment had the words, “my life is useless” and “the thoughts won’t stop help me,” written in addition to other statements and drawings.

When school officials asked Crumbley and her husband to go to the school, Crumbley testified she thought the shooter had sketched the gun in defiance of a recent conversation they had about his falling math grade, during which he had his phone taken away and was told he couldn’t go to the shooting range until his grade improved.

This was the first time she and her husband had been called to the school on an “immediate” time frame, Crumbley testified and she had told her boss she would be back at work an hour later.

Crumbley said she expected her son to get in trouble and get suspended, but the meeting was “nonchalant” and “brief.”

“There is never a time where I would refuse to take him home,” Crumbley testified, adding that she told her husband to start calling mental health professionals suggested by Hopkins.

Crumbley said she and her husband lost everything, adding she doesn’t feel like she failed as a parent and she had no reason to think her son was a danger to anyone else. She said she doesn’t look back and think she would have done anything differently.

“You spend your whole life trying to protect your child from other dangers. You never would think you have to protect your child from harming somebody else,” Crumbley testified, adding that she wished he would have killed her and her husband instead of the other kids at the school.

The shooter’s father was responsible for gun storage as firearms were not really her thing, Crumbley said. The gun that was bought for her son’s use was secured using a cable lock and the key to unlock it was hidden in one of the many decorative beer steins throughout the house.

The prosecution “cherry-picked” evidence to make Crumbley look like a negligent mother and conflate the magnitude of the tragedy with Crumbley’s parenting, Smith said as part of Crumbley’s defense. Hours of the trial were dedicated to members of law enforcement going over the gruesome details of the shooting. But Smith said the case came down to the prosecution improperly asking the jury to come to the assumption that Crumbley could have conceived what no parent would think their child would be capable of.

“When you look back in hindsight, with 20-20 vision … it is easy to say this could have been different, that could have been different, this would have changed,” Smith said.

Due to the community impact of the shooting and the future legal implications for parents of mass shooters in the future, the case has garnered national attention.

The jury’s verdict stands as a reminder to parents and gun owners that they are responsible for ensuring children can’t access their firearms unsupervised, Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement after the verdict was read.

“Plain and simple, the deadly shooting at Oxford High School in 2021 should have — and could have — been prevented had the Crumbley’s not acquired a gun for their 15-year-old son,” Suplina said. “This decision is an important step forward in ensuring accountability and, hopefully, preventing future tragedies.”

The decision marks Michigan setting a standard for the legal response to “when our kids are killed in their sanctuaries,” U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) said in a statement Tuesday. She applauded .

“Today is a historic day in Michigan, and really for the whole country. Having watched the Oxford community go through this school shooting firsthand, and seeing the lifelong hole it ripped in the lives of everyone involved, this verdict feels like a small moment of relief,” Slotkin said. “It is my hope that it brings a bit of peace to the survivors and to the entire community, as I know everyone in Oxford has worked to heal together over the past two years.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on and .

One student, 16-year-old star running back Tate Myre, as he charged toward the gunman in an attempt to stop the mayhem. He died while being rushed to the hospital in the back of a deputy’s squad car.

For many, the scene symbolized a harrowing reality: After years of routine drills, the school’s students — members of the “lockdown generation” — seemed to know how they should act under fire. For the ALICE Training Institute, among the country’s most controversial school security groups, scenes from inside the school were validating. Oxford students underwent ALICE’s , a fact that Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said likely saved lives.

The Oxford community “would have seen three to 10 X the number of deaths” without the company’s guidance, JP Guilbault, CEO of , which owns ALICE, told The 74. Such casualty claims would have made the Oxford shooting — where four students were killed and six students and one teacher injured — the worst mass school shooting in U.S. history. 

“Based on student accounts, it was clear to me the school went well into preparing their kids for something they hoped they would never see,” said Guilbault, who leads the country’s largest for-profit provider of active-shooter drills. “But those kids were prepared.” 

Almost all schools in America conduct active shooter drills despite a growing concern in recent years that they’re ineffective and traumatize students who are forced to grapple with their mortality on a regular basis. Dubbed by one news outlet, ALICE has repeatedly found itself at the forefront of controversy. In a 2019 ALICE training incident, for example, law enforcement officers who led a mock school shooting with plastic airsoft pellets, leaving welts and bruises on the unsuspecting educators. The episode led school safety experts to denounce the drills. 

Now, the high-profile Nov. 30 shooting in Oxford, which resulted in the very rare circumstance of both the 15-year-old suspected gunman and his parents being charged, has reignited a tense debate about how to prepare students for the possibility that they could find themselves under attack. In a letter, Oxford Community Schools Superintendent Tim Throne said the district to review its safety practices. 

ALICE — an acronym for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate — employs a model that goes far beyond traditional lockdown drills that the company and its proponents say offers a toolbox of options as an attack unfolds and increases students’ odds of survival. Yet critics argue the institute’s training doesn’t just traumatize children, but could put them at greater risk of getting killed. 

Traditional lockdowns teach children to bolt classroom doors, turn off the lights, move as far away from windows and doors as possible, stay completely silent and wait for emergency responders to arrive with help. Along with locking doors, “multi-options” approaches like ALICE teach students to barricade the doors with desks, chairs and other environmental objects and to self-evacuate if they feel it’s safe. As a last resort, ALICE teaches students to “counter” — or fight — the gunman. 

Teaching kids to fight off a gunman is by far ALICE’s most contentious lesson. But Guilbault, the CEO, said that traditional lockdowns teach students “to just sit in place” and conditions “the natural freeze process” when confronted with a deadly threat. By presenting multiple avenues of response, Guilbault said, ALICE strengthens students’ chances of coming out of such lethal encounters alive. The factors most critical to survival, he said, are “time and distance.” 

“Should a door get breached, your job is to figure out how to give yourself time and distance,” including through distraction techniques like throwing books and other classroom supplies, he said. “It’s clear the kids were getting ready, if that door was breached, to throw objects and to give themselves the best chance of surviving.” 

In one viral video, a classroom of students were shown engaging with someone through a barricaded door who identifies himself as a member of the sheriff’s office. Skeptical of the man who tells them “it’s safe to come out,” students flee the room through a window. Guilbault said the students made the right decision when they refused to open the door because they were unsure who stood on the other side. Yet he said he would have instructed them to remain silent rather than engage in a conversation with the man. The sheriff later said the man was not the gunman, but was most likely a plainclothes police officer. 

Though Guilbault declined to comment on reports that Myre, one of the shooting victims, had charged toward the gunman, he advised against the strategy.

“Fighting is a last resort,” he said. “We teach individuals that are not first responders to move away from danger, not towards it.

Drills raise competing philosophies

School safety consultant Kenneth Trump, the president of Cleveland-Based National School Safety and Security Services, is among the institute’s most outspoken critics. K-12 students’ brains haven’t fully developed and many lack the capacity to fight off a gunman, Trump said. Meanwhile, students self-evacuating from the school could increase their odds of getting shot, he said, while inhibiting police officers’ ability to pursue the shooter. 

Students are being asked “to make split-second decisions that trained law enforcement and military professionals still struggle with” when confronting an armed gunman, said Trump, who endorses traditional lockdowns during active shootings. 

Research on the efficacy of active-shooter drills is limited, but in the peer-reviewed Journal of School Violence used simulations to test ALICE against traditional lockdown drills. Traditional lockdown drills ended when the shooter ran out of ammunition, researchers found, while participants using ALICE techniques were able to thwart the attacker. The study’s results, the authors wrote in an op-ed, “brings into serious question if traditional lockdown should still be considered as the sole response to these types of events.” The sophomore charged in the Oxford shooting had 18 rounds of ammunition still on him when he quickly surrendered to police. 

Trump challenged the study’s independence and rigor. One author works for ALICE and the others are certified ALICE instructors. Police officers made up a large share of simulation participants and children weren’t included. 

Study co-author Cheryl Lero Jonson, an associate criminal justice professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, denied that any conflicts of interest exist between her being a certified ALICE instructor and her research. 

ALICE relies on a train-the-trainer model to put its method in front of millions of kids across the country each year. Through a two-day course, educators and police learn the ins and outs of the approach before passing its lessons on to youth. Guilbault said that multiple Oxford officials are ALICE instructors and the district has been a customer for several years, but declined to comment on who went through the company’s certification process. 

ALICE’s train-the-trainer model allows for a wide degree of variability, Guilbault said. Oftentimes, the drills are , who are accustomed to tactical training, and are conducted to mimic real-world shooting simulations — a tactic Guilbault said “is common in law enforcement, but it’s not applicable for kids or teachers.” used by ALICE trainers. Guilbault said that ALICE instructors must take students’ age into consideration.

The result, Trump argued, is a training model that resembles the “telephone game” that’s left some districts undergoing full-scale simulations that resemble real-world mass shootings.

“It leaves a lot of room for interpretation to the point where we’ve seen some very extreme cases” including incidents where administrators told kids to keep cans of soup under their desk to throw at any potential gunmen. “Those variations have left people scratching their heads going, ‘What are you thinking?’” 

Johnson said that ALICE “adamantly opposes’ full-scale active shooter simulations with weapons and fake blood because it “causes undue trauma” in children.  

“We don’t put smoke in a school to practice for fire or big fans in the school to practice for a tornado,” she said while acknowledging that simulations have been central to multiple ALICE-related controversies. “Personally, what I think is happening, it’s rogue instructors.” 

Drills prompt psychological concerns

Some education leaders and school safety experts have challenged the premise of active shooter drills altogether, pointing to a growing concern that active-shooter drills traumatize the kids who are forced to endure them.

Last year, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund to unannounced active-shooter drills that simulate gun violence. Also in 2020, Everytown researchers and found the timing of active shooter drills were correlated with an uptick in posts that signaled stress, anxiety and depression among students, parents and teachers.  

Jonson, the Xavier University researcher, has pushed back. In a report last year, she that students are no more fearful of ALICE training than tornado drills. Just 1 in 10 surveyed students reported feeling a negative psychological outcome from ALICE. The 2019 survey was conducted in a single unidentified school district in the Midwest, which used discussion-based instruction rather than simulations. 

Forensic psychologist Jillian Peterson, an associate criminal justice professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota and co-founder of , said the national conversation about school shootings has focused too much attention on “target hardening” and responding to shootings rather than heading off the tragedies from unfolding in the first place. Peterson promotes a greater emphasis on preventative strategies like improving mental health supports in schools, creating welcoming campus environments and establishing anonymous reporting tools where students can alert the authorities to their peers’ troubling behaviors. 

On two occasions just before the Oxford shooting, teachers sounded the alarm about the suspected gunman’s concerning behavior. On the morning of the shooting, the student and his parents to discuss his behaviors but he was ultimately allowed to return to class. Several hours later, police say, he walked out of a school bathroom and opened fire. The factors leading up to the shooting will likely be explored in the independent review of the school’s actions 

Active shooter drills in particular, Peterson said, fail to account for a reality that most school shooters are insiders. Her research has found that are carried out by current or former students. Along with concerns the drills could lead to heightened anxiety and increase the perception that statistically rare school shootings are commonplace, Peterson said that active shooter drills — including the one recently carried out in Oxford — could teach gunmen how officials will react under siege. 

“If it’s an insider going through all of that with everybody else, with all of that information, then that approach just stops making a lot of sense,” Peterson said. “But that also opens up all of these new avenues where you can say, ‘Hey, it’s a kid in this school who is going to do this. How do we make sure, as a school, that none of these kids are going to want to do this?’” 

Meanwhile, there’s a growing concern that school shootings in which one mass shooting has a tendency to spark additional violence in the immediate aftermath as vulnerable people considering violence seek fame after reading about shootings and identifying with the gunman. Following the Oxford shooting, schools nationwide were confronted with a wave of “copycat” threats. 

Frequent active shooter drills, Peterson worries, could plant a seed by placing so much attention on school shooting preparedness.  

“When we’re running students through this over and over and over again, what is that doing in terms of increasing fascination, in terms of having students think through this again and again?” she asked. “What was that experience for this perpetrator when he went through this ALICE training a month ago?” 

The parents of the 15-year-old accused of carrying out a deadly shooting at a Michigan high school pleaded not guilty Saturday to involuntary manslaughter, a rare charge the county prosecutor said was warranted because “the facts in this case are so egregious.” 

The parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were the subject of an intense manhunt into the early hours Saturday after being charged Friday with four counts of involuntary manslaughter each in the deaths of Oxford High School students Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; and Justin Shilling, 17. The by their attorney after the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office moved to arrest them and a statewide “Be on the Lookout” alert was issued for them shortly after 1 p.m. A lawyer for the parents later said the but rather left town after the shooting due to safety concerns and planned to turn themselves in. 

They never did and Detroit police arrested them early Saturday after someone spotted their car and called 911. They in a video arraignment Saturday morning and were each held on $500,000 bond in the Oakland County jail.

Just four days before the Oxford High School shooting that killed four and injured seven others, James Crumbley legally bought a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer handgun and gave it to his son as a Christmas gift, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said during a Friday media conference. The boy is accused of carrying out the shooting at his school with the weapon, which officials say had been stored in an unlocked drawer in his parents’ bedroom. Gun ownership is a right, she said, that comes with “a great responsibility.”

“I want to be really clear that these charges are intended to hold the individuals who contributed to this tragedy accountable and also send the message that gun owners have a responsibility,” McDonald said. “When they fail to uphold that responsibility, there are serious and criminal consequences.” 

Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, is a close observer of violent campus attacks and has testified as an expert witness following high-profile mass school shootings across the country. He said parents have previously been charged for failing to store their firearms locked and out of reach of their children. But the involuntary manslaughter charges were “perhaps unprecedented,” he said. 

“This tells me the prosecutor has some very solid evidence that it was more than negligence,” Trump told The 74. 

The parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were the subject of a manhunt Friday afternoon after being charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter each in the deaths of Oxford High School students Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; and Justin Shilling, 17. The by their attorney after the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office moved to arrest them and a statewide “Be on the Lookout” alert was issued for them shortly after 1 p.m. A lawyer for the parents later said the but rather left town after the shooting due to safety concerns and planned to turn themselves in. 

The day before the shooting, a teacher observed the suspect using his cell phone during class to search for ammunition and his parents were notified of his behavior, McDonald said, but school officials never received a response. In a text message to her son, the suspect’s mother allegedly said, “LOL I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught.” 

On the morning of the shooting, a teacher saw the suspect draw a picture of a gun with people bleeding. “My life is useless,” he allegedly wrote on the paper, which also stated that “The world is dead.” The drawing also said “the thoughts won’t stop, help me,” and “blood everywhere.” The suspect and his parents were summoned to the office and the teen was required to undergo counseling within 48 hours. The suspect didn’t face any discipline and was allowed to return to class. Officials believe the Oxford High sophomore was carrying the semi-automatic pistol in his backpack during the meeting with his parents and school officials. 

Some three hours later, police say he walked out of  a school bathroom and began shooting at students indiscriminately in a hallway. He fired some 30 rounds and had 18 more still in his possession when he surrendered to law enforcement within minutes of their arrival at the suburban Detroit high school. He was arraigned on Wednesday and charged as an adult with terrorism and four counts of first-degree murder, in addition to assault with intent to murder and firearms charges. The teen, who police say was advised by his parents after his arrest not to speak to investigators, pleaded not guilty. 

After hearing news of the shooting, Jennifer Crumbley allegedly texted her son “don’t do it,” and James Crumbley drove home to look for the gun. In a call to police, the suspect’s father reported the gun missing and said he believed his son was the perpetrator. James Crumbley and Jennifer Crumbley as a real estate broker in the Oxford area. 

More than cancelled classes Friday following a wave of “copycat” shooting threats. Threats of school shootings have also been reported outside of Michigan. In Florida, a and accused of threatening an armed attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed in a 2018 shooting. 

School district officials have been sharply criticized for their actions leading up to the event and McDonald fielded questions from reporters Friday about whether educators could also face criminal charges. She didn’t rule out the possibility. 

In , Oxford schools Superintendent Tim Throne said the suspected shooter didn’t have a disciplinary record. He was called to the principal’s office prior to the shooting, Throne acknowledged, but ultimately “no discipline was warranted.” In a rebuttal, McDonald suggested that school officials missed a clear opportunity to prevent the shooting from ever occurring. The perpetrator should have never been allowed to go back to class, she said, and acknowledged an investigation is ongoing about whether school officials were criminally negligent. 

Trump, the school safety consultant, commended McDonald for being transparent about her office’s investigation of school leaders. 

“They have not made any political commentary to protect the district,” he said. “A lot of times, you’ll see a circling of the wagons of government organizations. You don’t see that here and you can tell the prosecutors and sheriff’s office are moving methodically forward to build their cases.” 

Though school shootings are statistically rare and campuses have actually grown safer in recent years, the Oxford shooting has also brought the Second Amendment and gun control laws back to the forefront of the national conversation, a fierce and cyclical debate that often follows mass school shootings. In 2016, Jennifer Crumbley to then-President Donald Trump thanking him for ensuring “my right to bear arms.” 

Unwilling to steer clear of politics, McDonald said her state’s firearm rules are “woefully inadequate.” 

“We need to do better in this country,” McDonald said. “We need to say enough is enough. For our kids, our teachers, parents, for all of us in this community and the communities across this nation.”