(The Center Square) – A Michigan jury is expected begin deliberations today in the involuntary manslaughter case of Jennifer Crumbley.
The jury will decide whether the mother was grossly negligent and whether her actions resulted in her then-15-year-old son Ethan Crumbley obtaining a 9 mm pistol he used to shoot and kill four Oxford High School students in November 2021 and wounded seven others.
The case that stretched for two weeks and cataloging over 400 exhibits of evidence will hinge on whether the shooting could have been “reasonably foreseen.”
The prosecution maintains Ethan Crumbley asked his parents for mental health help via text messages and drawings but they laughed at him and ignored him.
Jennifer Crumbley took the stand last week to argue her son had general anxiety about school and the future but didn’t need mental health help.
Jennifer said the gun was a gift for him to use at the shooting range.
“We didn’t just hand him a gun…” Jennifer said during cross-examination.
Jennifer admitted to spending about $21,000 on horses in 2021 but didn’t evaluate her son’s mental health after he texted her the same year claiming he was seeing “demons.”
On the day of the shooting, Ethan and his parents met with school staff after they found drawings of shootings of violence, blood and guns.
The drawings were alongside the words: “the thoughts won’t stop [sic] help me”, “life is useless”, and “the world is dead.”
The parents didn’t remove Ethan from school. Later that day, he pulled the 9mm pistol from his backpack and began firing.
Ethan Crumbley is serving life in prison without parole. Now, the question remains whether his parents will face manslaughter charges for allowing a minor access to a gun that killed four children – 16-year-old Tate Myre, 14-year-old Hanna St. Julian, 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin and 17-year-old Justin Schilling.
The shooting helped enact support for a safe storage law passed by the Michigan Legislature that will require guns to be locked away when minors are in the home or are expected to be.
