Oxford High School officials could face criminal charges and civil lawsuits for failing to search 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley’s backpack and locker before the fatal shooting despite catching him searching for ammunition on his phone and for a disturbing drawing before the shooting.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said school officials had the legal authority to search Crumbley’s belongings when they found a chilling note on his desk that featured disturbing drawings depicting a gun, a bullet, blood, a shooting victim and a laughing emoji.
The note included the words: ‘Thoughts won’t stop, help me’; ‘my life is useless’ and ‘the world is dead,’ according to prosecutors.
When questioned by school counselors just hours before his gun rampage, Ethan said the graphic drawing was a plan for a video game.
At that point, McDonald said the gun would have been at the school, and ‘we don’t know exactly if the weapon was in his bag, where it was. We just know it was in the school and he had access to it’.
The day before the shooting, Ethan was spotted searching for ammunition on his phone, and when asked by a teacher he said it was for his parents’ gun hobby. When the school raised the issue with his parents, his mother sent him a text saying: ‘LOL. I’m not even mad at you.’
When asked if school staff members could be prosecuted, McDonald told CNN’s Brianna Keilar, ‘We haven’t ruled out charging anyone.’
She later said in another interview with ABC’s Good Morning America that she could charge the school officials in the shooting, noting: ‘In this case, a lot could have been done different.’
McDonald said the investigation’s findings will determine whether school officials will be charged in last Tuesday’s attack at Oxford High School.
Ethan was charged as an adult Wednesday with terrorism, first degree murder and other counts in the shooting that killed Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Justin Shilling, 17.
His parents were also charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. All three have pleaded not guilty.
Ethan Crumbley, 15, is accused of fatally shooting Oakland High School last Tuesday, killing four students. He is being charged as an adult with terrorism and first-degree murdre
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, right, said school officials had the legal authority to search 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley’s backpack and locker when they had concerns about some drawings and statements he made prior to the fatal shooting last Tuesday, but failed to do so
“I’m focused on … holding the people accountable who could have prevented this, and right now the Crumbleys are those two people,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald says about the parents of the Michigan school shooting suspect.https://t.co/iybEF84GIo pic.twitter.com/em8238Ku3a
— New Day (@NewDay) December 6, 2021
In the interview on Monday, McDonald said Crumbley’s parents are being criminally prosecuted because ‘we have to start addressing how someone like that can so easily get their hands on a weapon, and we have to hold the people responsible who allowed that to happen.
‘I’m sympathetic to parents, my husband and I have raised five children,’ McDonald noted. ‘I’m certainly not suggesting that parents should be criminally responsible for any bad act of a child.
‘But in this case, you can’t possibly look at their actions and say they didn’t have reason to believe that there was a real concern about a violent act.’
On the day of the fatal shooting, Crumbley’s parents met with school officials after a teacher became concerned with a drawing he made that included a bullet and the words ‘blood everywhere’ and statements he made prior to the fatal shooting.
According to Oxford Community Schools Superintendent Tim Throne, the teacher alerted school counselors and the dean of students about the drawings and statements Ethan made, after previously viewing images of ammunition on his phone he claimed was for his family’s shooting hobby, and he was ‘immediately removed from the classroom.’
Guidance counselors then monitored him for an hour and a half as they unsuccessfully tried to reach his parents, James and Jennifer.
When they eventually responded, counselors asked them about Ethan’s capacity for harm and concluded ‘he did not intend on committing either self harm or harm to others,’ according to a letter Throne sent to community members over the weekend.
The guidance counselors reportedly suggested James and Jennifer bring him home for the day, but they said they had to return to work.
A few hours later, Throne writes, Ethan started shooting just before 1pm ‘during passing time between classes when hundreds of students were in the hallway transitioning from one classroom to another.’
His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were also charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter after they allegedly bought the gun for their son
Thorne said a third party will investigate the events that occurred before the school shooting in Oxford Township, a community of about 23,000 people roughly 30 miles north of Detroit.
On Sunday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said her office might conduct the probe.
Ethan Crumbley has been charged as an adult with murder, terrorism and other crimes in the attack. And McDonald filed involuntary manslaughter charges against his parents, saying they failed to intervene on the day of the tragedy despite being confronted with the drawing and its disturbing message.
McDonald said Monday that Crumbley’s parents did not mention during the meeting at the school that Ethan had access to a 9mm semi-automatic pistol.
Authorities say he used the gun to carry out the attack, and that his father bought it for him at a local gun shop on Black Friday as an early Christmas present. Although the gun was legally sold to James Crumbley, minors in Michigan cannot possess guns aside from in limited situations, such as when hunting with an adult.
‘You can´t even in an airport mention anything that even remotely indicates that there might be some sort of violence on a plane. You´ll be immediately extracted,’ McDonald told ABC.
‘And yet we have a kid who is … saying some pretty concerning things and he was allowed to go back to school, and neither parent mentions that he had access to a weapon.’
Madisyn Baldwin, 17, (left) and Hana St Juliana, 14, (right) died in Tuesday’s shooting rampage at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit
Justin Shilling, 17, (left) died in the hospital on Wednesday morning and Tate Myre (right) died in the school on Tuesday
Police responded to the scene of Oxford High School in Michigan last Tuesday after receiving numerous calls about shots ringing out
People were seen embracing on Wednesday at a makeshift memorial outside of the high school, where four students were killed
Students mourned at the growing memorial last Wednesday
McDonald said prosecutors have evidence suggesting that the couple ‘purchased that weapon for their 15-year-old and bragged about it online – thought this was some joyous occasion as a present.’
And she said the teen had access to the gun ‘whether it was locked or not’ at his family’s home.
The parents were taken into custody early Saturday after they were caught hiding inside in the Detroit studio of artist Andrzej Sikora.
The artist’s attorney said Sunday that he is cooperating with investigators and didn’t know the couple was facing charges or that they had stayed overnight at his studio while authorities were searching for them.
The couple’s attorneys have said they didn’t intend to flee.