Michigan Teen Shooter’s Parents Get 10-15 Years in Prison

Ethan Crumbley was just 15 years old when he went and shot up Oxford High School. Crazy, he owned up to it in 2022, admitting to four counts of first-degree murder and some other stuff. They slapped him with a life sentence in December, no chance of parole.

The Michigan teen who shot four classmates has just received a sentence of 10 to 15 years behind bars. Yes, the parents of Ethan Crumbley, the kid who committed the shooting, are facing sentencing on Tuesday. Can you believe it? Juries found them guilty of manslaughter. It’s pretty unusual to see parents held accountable like this in a school shooting.

So, Jennifer and James Crumbley got their own trials this year. They’re looking at up to 15 years in the slammer for what their kid Ethan did back in 2021. They are the first parents of a school shooter in the US to receive a conviction. And get this, they finally showed up together at the hearing on Tuesday after being apart for months.

They both said they’re sorry about what Ethan did. And their lawyers are trying to make sure they don’t end up in prison for too long. Tough situation all around.

Judge Cheryl Matthews said the parents, Jennifer and James Crumbley, are looking at 10 to 15 years in prison to try and stop this kind of thing from happening again. She thinks they didn’t do enough to stop their son’s attack. She said it’s not about being mind readers but about missed chances to stop something bad from happening.

The Crumbleys can ask for parole after 10 years, but if they don’t get it, they can’t be in prison for more than 15 years. The prosecutors said the parents ignored obvious signs that their son was struggling, and they even bought him the gun he used in the attack.

Their son Ethan was 15 when he shot and killed four students and hurt seven others at Oxford High School. Now, authorities have locked him up for life without parole.

At the court, parents of the victims who were all teenagers spoke up. Nicole Beausoleil, the mom of 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin, talked directly to Ethan’s parents. She said while they were getting him a gun, she was helping her daughter with college stuff. Her heart breaks because they prioritized something other than parenting, leading to the loss of her daughter.

Jill Soave, the mom of another 17-year-old victim, Justin Shilling, spoke too. She said it’s hard to describe how much pain she’s in. She blamed Ethan’s parents for not doing anything to stop what could’ve been prevented. If they had just done something different, maybe her son would still be alive.

James Crumbley bought a 9mm semi-automatic handgun as a Christmas gift for Ethan just four days before he went and shot up the school on November 30, 2021.

On the day of the shooting, both Ethan’s parents were called to the school because teachers found some really violent stuff in his schoolwork. They said he needed to see a counselor right away. But instead of listening, the Crumbleys took him home and didn’t even bother checking his backpack or asking him about the gun they knew he had.

After that, they sent him back to class like everything was normal. But then he comes out of the bathroom with the gun and starts shooting, according to what prosecutors said in court. It’s a real mess.

Michigan teen’s parents apology:

Before the hearing, the shooter’s dad said he really wished he had done things differently. He told the court later that he regrets not knowing what was happening with his son or what he was going to do because he would’ve acted differently for sure.

Jennifer Crumbley also spoke up and said she’s really sorry to the families who were affected. She didn’t ask for forgiveness because she knows it might be too much to ask, but she wanted to say sorry for all the pain that happened because of what her son did.

In the U.S., where there’s a lot of gun violence, there have been many school shootings over the years. Usually, it’s students who do the shooting, but the Crumbleys were the first parents charged with manslaughter for their kid’s school shooting.

The charges they faced were kind a new and uncommon in the U.S. It’s not something we’ve seen much of before.

Experts who want guns to be safer say the Crumbleys’ trials were a big deal. They think it’s important to hold parents accountable when their kids do something like this. Studies by the Department of Homeland Security found that about 75% of school shooters got their guns from home. So, it’s a big deal to make sure parents are more careful about their guns.

Last year, an investigation that wasn’t connected to the court stuff said the school messed up in a lot of ways, like letting Ethan go back to class after all that bad stuff. The school district promised to look into what went wrong and make things better for the future.