James Crumbley, the father of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley is found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for failing to store safely the gun his 15-year-old son used to kill four students

The father of Oxford school shooter Ethan Crumbley has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after supplying the gun used in the shooting to his son. 

A jury convicted James Crumbley of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the deadly shooting in 2021 after deliberating for ten hours. 

Crumbley, 47, joins his wife Jennifer Crumbley who was also found guilty on February 6 of involuntary manslaughter.

The two are the first parents in the US to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack.

Their son Ethan, then aged 15, opened fire at the school in Oxford, Michigan, and murdered Hana St. Juliana, Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre, and Justin Shilling. 

He pleaded guilty in 2022 to four counts of first-degree murder and other charges and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in December. 

Crumbley faced four counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each of the victims at Oxford High School in the 2021 shootings. Jurors began deliberating on Wednesday. 

‘This is a very egregious and rare, rare set of facts,’ Oakland County, Michigan, prosecutor Karen McDonald told the jury during closing arguments on Wednesday.

McDonald said Crumbley ignored signs that his son was deeply disturbed, did not get him the help he needed, and did not safely store the firearm in the family home.

McDonald also presented the jury with texts that Ethan Crumbley had sent to a friend and journal entries he had written in the months leading up to the shooting.

In those, he talked about wanting medical attention and hearing voices, but he was worried his parent would be ‘pissed.’

On one occasion, according to a text message to a friend, Ethan asked Crumbley to take him to the doctor, but his dad ‘gave me some pills and told me to suck it up.’

Defense attorney Mariell Lehman argued that James Crumbley could not have possibly foreseen that his son would carry out a mass shooting.

‘James had no idea that his son was having a hard time,’ Lehman told jurors during her closing argument, saying no evidence had been presented that James knew the contents of his son’s text messages or journal.

Crumbley, accompanied by Ethan, bought a Sig Sauer 9 mm handgun over Thanksgiving weekend in 2021. 

The boy called it his ‘new beauty’ on social media. His mother described the gun as a Christmas gift and took him to a shooting range.

Four days after the purchase, the parents went to Oxford High to discuss a violent image their son had drawn on a math assignment.

Alongside the drawing including phrases that said: ‘The thoughts won´t stop. Help me.’ There was a gun on the paper that looked similar to the Sig Sauer.

The Crumbley’s didn’t take him home, and school staff – believing he might be suicidal – also didn’t demand it. 

But no one checked the boy’s backpack for a gun, and the shooting happened that afternoon.

During the trial, prosecutors showed that the gun, a newly acquired Sig Sauer 9 mm, was not safely secured at the Crumbley home. 

He had kept the guns in a drawer under the island of his kitchen, keeping both a Derringer and a KelTech in the box secured with just a ‘000’ code. 

ATF Special Agent Brett Brandon testified that when he inspected Ethan’s 9mm, he ‘found no evidence that a cable lock was ever installed on that firearm.’

The cable lock was found in the gun box still in its original packaging, despite Brandon noting it would have taken around 10 seconds to secure. 

In a dramatic step, the prosecutor demonstrated how to use a cable to lock the gun that was used in the shooting.