Jennifer Crumbley will be sentenced on April 9 and could face up to 15 years in prison.
Washington:
A jury on Tuesday found a Michigan mother guilty of manslaughter in the mass shooting of her teenage son at a school, in an unprecedented and closely watched case.
Jennifer Crumbley, 45, and her husband, James, 47, are the first parents of a school shooter in the United States to face felony manslaughter charges for their children’s actions.
After about a day and a half of deliberation by a jury in Pontiac, Michigan, Jennifer Crumbley was found guilty of all four counts of involuntary manslaughter.
She will be sentenced on April 9 and could face up to 15 years in prison. Her husband will be tried separately in March.
Their 17-year-old son, Ethan Crumbley, is serving a life sentence for the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School that killed four students.
The Crumbleys bought their son a 9mm SIG Sauer pistol, which he used to carry out the attack, and were accused of ignoring warnings that he suffered from mental health problems.
In closing arguments, prosecutor Karen McDonald told the jury that Jennifer Crumbley failed to do “the smallest, simplest thing that could have prevented the situation.” Under the circumstances, exercise ordinary caution.”
“She could have locked the ammunition. She could have locked the gun,” McDonald said. “She could have told the school they just gave him a gun.
“She could have told the school that her son had been in crisis before and sought help.”
Defense attorney Shannon Smith countered that Crubley could not be held responsible for her son’s actions.
“No one could have predicted this,” Smith said. “Can every parent really be held responsible for everything their children do?”
“This case is very dangerous for parents,” she added.
– An early Christmas gift –
Crumbley testified during the trial that her husband bought her son the gun as an early Christmas gift days before the attack, and she took the boy to the shooting range the next day.
She said her husband was responsible for storing weapons at the home for her son to use “only at the shooting range.”
She said she never had reason to believe her son was capable of such a violent act.
“I wish he would kill us,” she said.
The Crumbleys were summoned to school on the day of the shooting after a teacher discovered a violent drawing on Ethan’s desk that left her “shocked.”
The parents saw the painting and suggested they needed to get the boy into counseling.
They allegedly refused to take their son home and he returned to class.
He then entered a bathroom, came out with a gun hidden in his backpack, and fired more than 30 times.
Pressure is growing in the United States to punish parents who allow their children to obtain weapons amid a spate of fatal gun incidents involving young people.
The father of an Illinois man accused of killing seven people in July 2022 pleaded guilty in November to a misdemeanor charge of “reckless conduct” for helping his son obtain an assault rifle used in the mass shooting.
A Virginia woman whose 6-year-old son shot and wounded a teacher was recently sentenced to two years in prison for felony child neglect and 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to unlawfully obtaining a firearm.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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