Maybe there should be a new TV show, Tragedy, American Style. The story of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley and his parents has a uniquely American flavor to it. There is plenty of white grievance and MAGA mentality exhibited and when this matter calms down a bit, you will see plenty of articles directed to the roots of this incredible saga playing out in the Michigan night right now.
Jennifer and James Crumbley didn’t show up at a late afternoon arraignment and after 5:00 p.m. the matter went into the hands of the U.S. Marshals. Is this a case of the parents abandoning their son to face his ordeal alone? Can they possibly be so stupid as to believe they will escape the authorities? Both?
This case has escalated beyond the usual parameters of a mass shooting in many ways. Just briefly review the facts and you’ll see how this is different. This case may be a game changer and change the gun laws as they are screaming to be changed.
As you are painfully aware, the 15-year-old’s parents bought him a gun at Thanksgiving as an early Christmas gift. Ethan Crumbley returned to school on Monday, but his mind was not on his studies. He was busy online looking for ammunition. This didn’t disturb his mother one jot.
“LOL I’m not mad at you,” Jennifer Crumbley texted her son. “You have to learn not to get caught.”
LOL, a day later the teenager killed four of his classmates using his pride and joy new toy. It’s pretty evident that he didn’t see the gun as a means of sport, target practice, or self-defense, but rather as a lethal weapon.
This story of the recent school shooting was horrific enough, as they all are, but then a new spin was thrown into the mix when Friday morning involuntary manslaughter charges were filed by the county prosecutor against the parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley. That is a case of first impression. Charging the parents of school shooters is not a new concept but this is the first time that it has actually happened, due to the egregiousness of the circumstances. New York Times:
Ms. [Karen] McDonald [prosecutor] said the Crumbleys were culpable in the year’s deadliest school shooting because they had allowed their son access to a handgun while ignoring glaring warnings that he was on the brink of violence.
Law enforcement officials said that the parents had gone missing on Friday afternoon and that the county’s fugitive-apprehension team, F.B.I. agents and United States Marshals were looking for the couple. “They cannot run from their part in this tragedy,” Sheriff Michael Bouchard of Oakland County said in a statement.
Lawyers for the parents said the Crumbleys had not fled, but had left town for their own safety and were returning to be arraigned.
On the morning of Tuesday’s shooting, the suspect’s parents were urgently called to Oxford High School after one of his teachers found an alarming note he had drawn, scrawled with images of a gun, a person who had been shot, a laughing emoji and the words “Blood everywhere” and “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”
School officials told the parents during the in-person meeting that they were required to seek counseling for their son, Ethan, Ms. McDonald said. The teenager’s parents did not want their son to be removed from school that day, and did not ask him whether he had the gun with him or search the backpack he brought with him to the office, Ms. McDonald said.
“The notion that a parent could read those words and also know their son had access to a deadly weapon, that they gave him, is unconscionable, and I think it’s criminal,” she said. […]
At 1:22 p.m., as news of the shooting tore through Oxford, prosecutors said, Jennifer Crumbley texted her son: “Ethan don’t do it.”
But it was too late.
At 1:37 p.m., James Crumbley called 911 to say that a weapon was missing from his house, and that his son could be the gunman at Oxford High, prosecutors said.
Law enforcement officials say the gunman fired more than 30 rounds before he was apprehended. He has been charged with terrorism and first-degree murder in the deaths of Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Justin Shilling, 17; and Hana St. Juliana, 14. Seven other people were wounded.
A lawyer for Ethan Crumbley pleaded not guilty on his behalf this week. Parents across the country have been charged with child abuse, violating gun laws and even negligent manslaughter after their young children accidentally shoot themselves or other children. But gun control experts said Ms. McDonald’s move to charge the parents of a mass shooting suspect was almost unheard-of.
That’s the back story, which brings us up to 5:00 p.m. when it was announced that the parents had blown off their late afternoon arraignment and gone missing. One of their attorneys admitted that she had not actually spoken to them in a while. Enter federal law enforcement, the FBI and U.S. Marshals.
The US Marshals have adopted the case of the search for James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of the accused Oxford HS (Mich.) shooter. The USMS Detroit Fugitive Apprehension team is working in conjunction with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office on the search.
— U.S. Marshals (@USMarshalsHQ) December 3, 2021
— Rudy Romeiro (@RudyLRomeiro) December 3, 2021
So what is going on here, exactly? The fact that they would even think about running rather than deal with their son’s turmoil speaks volumes about who they are as parents, not that volumes haven’t already been spoken.
The speed at which this went south is simply amazing. The parents were told to get their kid into counseling within 48 hours and it was already too late. The tragedy happened later that day. Now the parents have panicked and its anybody’s guess how weird this will get before it’s over.
I can’t help thinking back to when I was a kid, even before I got my first shotgun (I was seven and it was my Christmas present) watching my dad break down and clean his shotgun after hunting. Even then, though he wouldn’t let me touch it he began drilling gun safety and responsibility into me. It was the same with other guys I grew up with. I won’t say we never thought about taking those guns out of their storage spaces, making sure they were unloaded and then holding them for a while. But none of us DARED to actually do it. Even at that young age, it was simply too terrifying a thought to defy our parents (not just dads) and get out any stored guns when no adults were around. It simply wasn’t done.
When we each got our own guns, or were allowed to use an extra for those dads who had more than one shotgun we goddamned well handled them safely and responsibly. When hunting was done we sat and cleaned the guns together, then stored them away and again, the rule was it stayed STORED until it was time to use it again, or in the long stretch between the end of one hunting season and the start of the next take it out of the case every few months to wipe it down and give it a fresh, light coal of oil. Again a task that was done with dad, or with his express permission.
One single incident of mishandling a firearm would have meant the end of hunting or gun privilges for me or any of the other young guys back where I lived. And in most places around the country for that matter. If gun racks were sometimes seen at high schools with guns in them back when I was in h.s., it was because everyone had had safe and responsible gun use drilled into them for so many years growing up.
Brandishing a gun, anywhere at someone would have brought swift and unpleasant action from ANY adult. We all knew it. We live in a different world now. Now young people (not just mostly guys anymore) are told they SHOULD be packing guns, and that it’s okay to use them for “defense” and worse, NOT as a last resort. Now, with so many more guns out there in so many households that aren’t secured we have school shootings and other shootings (some accidental due to lack of safe handling and some intentional) on a regular basis.
If parents aren’t going to be like they were about guns and their kid’s access to and use of them like they were back when I was growing up and into my adulthood then I think it’s long past time to start charging parents criminally with negligence. The gun fetish crowd will scream and howl of course, but in the end rights come with responsibilities. If someone isn’t willing to practice the latter as far as I’m concerned they forfeit the right to the former.
I wholeheartedly agree. I owned a gun for many years. I would still own it if it hadn’t gotten stolen by a creep that my ex-boyfriend let stay with us. It was a .44 Smith & Wesson and I used to take it to Beverly Hills Gun Club and shoot it for sport. I enjoyed shooting moving paper targets. It was fun. I always followed the law exactly, had the gun stored in the trunk on my way home, the ammo stored separately and I cleaned the gun afterwards and took care of it — until it got stolen. There is nothing wrong with knowing how to use a gun and as a woman living alone when I bought it, it made good sense to me. But somehow the sane and responsible use of guns you speak of has been warped into something else. Gun ownership is now synonymous with being an NRA fruitcake. It’s tragic. It truly is tragic.
It doesn’t matter what the lawyers said the parents would do, if they didn’t show up for the arraignment.
(I suspect they know militia types who would hide them because OMG they’ll take our gunz.)
This is turning into a Hollywood movie. Mark my words. If this gets any stranger, you’ll see it on the silver screen.
Charging this child as an adult is childish and irresponsible.
Premeditated killing by someone who knew what they were doing. Not a child’s crime.
WHY????
Then maybe CHILDREN shouldn’t be given a gun until they’re “responsible” enough to use it properly.
Is it legal for parents to give a handgun to a 15-year-old?
It’s about time the people in the USA started looking seriously into why their attitude to lethal weapons designed to kill is so seriously out of kilter with the rest of the civilized world.
The kid’s note said “help me.” Not enough detail to know for sure, but the kid might have been hearing voices. Yet mom and dad did nothing. These parents definitely bear some responsibility here: they failed their own child as much as they failed their community.