America is a country on the edge right now, and I don’t think that’s a hyperbolic statement. The video you are about to watch is of panicking Michiganians, attending a candlelight vigil in Oxford to mourn the loss of the four murdered high school students this week. A woman in the crowd faints, and it’s just like the old cliche of yelling “Fire” in a theater everybody panics and starts running. They see a body go down and they just assume that Death is among them. Again.
Watch.
Police who immediately knew this was a medical emergency were trying to calm people down but it took several minutes before the vigil resumed and many people just went home and many of them in tears. #Local4 pic.twitter.com/giGNE1loWd
— Jason Colthorp (@JasonColthorp) December 4, 2021
I’m with the lady who says, “I can’t do this anymore.” This is getting very old.
As to James and Jennifer Crumbley, there have been rumors that they are coming back to town to turn themselves in but nobody has seen that actually take place. The New York Times published an update on this story at 6:30 p.m. PST and the parents were still at large.
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.
Ever since the 1999 attack at Columbine High School, the parents of children who commit school shootings have come under scrutiny over missed warning signs and whether they should bear some blame. But they are rarely held criminally responsible in the raw aftermath of a school shooting, even though many underage attackers arm themselves with guns from home.
But in an extraordinary news conference, Ms. McDonald recounted a nearly minute-by-minute litany of missed opportunities to intervene — including how the suspect’s parents had been alerted to a disturbing drawing he made containing violent images and a plea for help just hours before the shooting.
This has got all the earmarks of a Hollywood movie. The Fugitive, as you recall, was based upon a true story. We’ve all seen manhunts in the movies, and surely the Crumbleys have seen them as well. They can’t escape their responsibility, as the Sheriff said, unless they do something truly whacko and kill themselves. Having no information on the people whatsoever beyond Jennifer Crumbley’s vulgar fan letter to Donald Trump, I don’t know if that’s a likely scenario.
But one thing is certain: the parents are pretty much in a Thelma and Louise moment. It’s either turn themselves in or do themselves in. If there is a third possibility, I don’t know it. Unless they’ve got militia buddies that will hide them and smuggle them into another state where they can live off the grid and be different people and that seems a bit far fetched even for Hollywood, let alone two immature people who panicked and ran rather than face the legal music — after they themselves had composed the symphony.
I am finding myself having compassion for the 15-year-old shooter, oddly. This display by his parents speaks of their mettle, or rather the lack of same. Who knows what has happened in that house or what the kid has been through to twist him in the manner he has been? As the twig is bent so grows the tree and this young sapling has not shown signs of turning into a sturdy oak, he’s a sociopath at age 15. And it’s beginning to make a great deal of sense how he got there. Apples not falling great distances from trees, etc.
Having known a few social workers and psychologists in my life, I can say that there are some characteristics that sociopathic families have in common: Isolation is a key characteristic, the reason being that there are secrets that have to be kept. Mrs. Crumbley has already made it clear that MAGA grievance very much dominates her thinking. The neighbors have already said that they didn’t know the family well, but that they were not problematic people so far as they could see.
It will be interesting to get more and more back story on this. I have the sense that this case is going to be a turning point.
It’s so funny how people who want to foster or adopt children have to undergo so much more scrutiny than any two straight people who “decide” to have a baby. State and local welfare officials will interview not only the prospective foster/adoptive parents but also people who know the prospective parents. They’re subjected to criminal background checks (and, sometimes, civil court background checks–small claims court, bankruptcy, etc) and their financial worthiness will be checked. They may be required to attend parenting classes, especially if the child is a special needs case.
But a straight couple get pregnant (intended or accidental) and, nothing. No checks to ensure the parents-to-be are emotionally and psychologically capable to raise the child. No checks to ensure they’ve got the necessary resources (including a “support network” like grandparents or other relatives who can intervene if necessary) to care for the child. And, as long as they’re white, no one’s going to check to make sure they’re financially capable (but there’ll be a lot of people who look at a Black or Hispanic couple and wonder if they can afford to raise the child, without “burdening” the welfare system).
In fact, with Roe V Wade on the line, religious zealots will be forcing many women to bear children they are not emotionally, intellectually or financially equipped to raise.
‘Two immature people who panicked and ran rather than face the legal music — after they themselves had composed the symphony.’
In a nutshell.