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by Mick the Ram
In a first for the United States, a woman has received a guilty verdict from a jury for involuntary manslaughter, for failing to prevent her own son from committing a mass shooting.
Jennifer Crumbley was accused of being negligent in allowing her 15-year-old child to have a gun and ignoring dangerous warning signs that ultimately led to a dire outcome.
The 45-year-old appeared at Oakland County Court, Michigan, on Tuesday 6 February and gave little emotion when the decision was read out to make her the first parent to be convicted of such a charge, of which there were four counts.
She will be sentenced at a later date in the knowledge that each of the individual manslaughter charges carry with them a 15-year maximum prison term.
Her husband, James, has pleaded not guilty to the same charges and is facing a separate trial next month.
Their son, Ethan, now 17-years-old, is serving life for killing four classmates at Oxford High School, Michigan on 30 November 2021. Seven others were injured in his shooting frenzy.
In total he pleaded guilty to 24 charges, including first-degree premeditated murder, and terrorism causing death.
Michigan’s worst
The two-week trial heard that the school shooting was the worst in Michigan state’s history.
It rocked a small suburb of around 22,000, located around 30 miles north of Detroit, in November 2021, when Ethan Crumbley shot and killed students: Hana St Juliana, 14, Tate Myre, 16, and 17-year-old’s Madisyn Baldwin and Justin Shilling.
He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, last December.
Failing to act on troubling signs
The burning question at Mrs Crumbley’s trial was whether, as the mother, she could have foreseen and prevented the deadly massacre. Together with her husband, they had bought the murder weapon for their son just days before the dreadful incident.
Prosecutors argued that the pair ignored their teenager’s depression and his fascination with guns. They were able to present evidence that Ethan Crumbley had reported suffering from hallucinations and wanted mental health help, but his parents failed to react.
Indeed, when challenged on the stand Jennifer Crumbley stated that she did not believe that her son had any mental health problems.
Troubling drawings
On the morning of the shooting, the parents cut short a school meeting that they had been called to, regarding disturbing drawings of a gun and bloody figures, which Ethan had produced on a school assignment.
He was also caught searching online for bullets at school, watching shooting videos in class and drawing violent images on several other papers.
Ignored advise to remove son from school
School officials testified that the parents chose not to take their son home, despite being advised to get him immediate help, and offering them facilities that provided same-day mental health care services.
Their excuse was that they both needed to return to work and therefore, if they took him out of school he would be home alone. He was sent back to class without anyone checking his backpack, which tragically contained the gun and several hours later he chose to use the shooter, with horrifying consequences.
Suspected son might act
The jury were shown a series of messages between Mrs Crumbley and a man she had an affair with, in which she had said she actually was afraid her son would do “something dumb”.
The accused tried to pin the blame on her husband, who she claimed was responsible for the gun purchase, but the prosecution were able to argue that the couple were at times seemingly more focused on their extramarital affairs, than tending to their son’s declining mental health.
Guilty after deliberations
After deliberating for around 11 hours the jury returned their guilty verdict. Afterwards the foreperson told waiting reporters that the decision essentially “came down to the fact that Jennifer was the last adult with the gun.”
Sentencing is scheduled for 9 April.
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