The mother of a teenage boy who fatally shot four students at a Michigan high school took the stand Thursday in her high-profile trial on involuntary manslaughter charges.

Prosecutors say Jennifer Crumbley and her husband, James, are the first parents of a school shooter in the United States to face felony charges for their children’s actions.

Their son, Ethan Crumbley, 17, is serving a life sentence for the Nov. 30, 2021 shooting at Oxford High School, which killed four students aged between 14 and 17 , six students and a teacher were injured.

The Crumbleys are accused of buying their son the 9mm SIG Sauer pistol he used to shoot and ignoring warnings that he suffered from mental health problems.

James Crumbley will stand trial alone in March.

Jennifer Crumbley testified 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.”

Crumbley told the jury she never had any communication with her son’s teachers about discipline issues, even though he frequently failed to turn in homework and received poor grades.

She said Ethan was anxious about what he was going to do after high school, “but not to the point where I thought he needed to see a psychiatrist or a mental health professional.”

When asked about their relationship, Crumbley said: “I think we’re very close. We talk. We do a lot of things together. I trust him and I feel like I have an open door and he can open up to me Ask about anything.”

‘panic’

She said she never had any reason to believe her son was capable of such a violent act.

“As a parent, you spend your life trying to protect your children from other dangers,” Crumbley said. “You never think you have to protect your child from hurting someone else.

“That’s the hardest thing for me to live with, my child hurting other people,” she said. “I hope he kills us.”

While teen school shootings have become a part of American life, it’s unprecedented for parents to face charges.

The Crumbleys were summoned to school on the day of the shooting after a teacher was “shocked” by a painting found on Ethan’s desk.

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.

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.

Manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison upon conviction.

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