(CNN) — The parents of the 15-year-old man charged in this week’s deadly shooting at Michigan’s Oxford High School were charged Friday with four counts of manslaughter.
“It has been a devastating week for us,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said at a news conference. “There are other individuals who contributed … and it is my intention to hold them accountable as well.”
In this rare case of indicting the parents, prosecutors will try to prove that James and Jennifer Crumbley were criminally negligent and contributed to a dangerous situation that resulted in the deaths of four teenagers on Tuesday.
Here are some of the chain events that led up to the Michigan shooting, according to the prosecutor:
November 27: McDonald said James Crumbley bought the gun four days before it was used in the shooting. His son, sophomore Ethan Crumbley, 15, was with him and later posted on social media about the gun, calling it “my new beauty.”
Jennifer Crumbley also posted about the gun on social media, calling it “her new Christmas present,” McDonald said.
November 29th: McDonald said a teacher saw Ethan Crumbley searching his cell phone for “ammunition” during class the day before the shooting and reported it to school authorities. Jennifer Crumbley was contacted by the school but reached voicemail. Officials also sent an email but received no response from either parent, McDonald said.
Jennifer Crumbley exchanged text messages about the incident with her son that day, saying, I quote: ‘LOL [risas], I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught. ‘ End of quote, “McDonald said.
November 30: A teacher found a note on Ethan Crumbley’s desk that alarmed her so much that she took a picture of him on her phone, McDonald said. The note included a picture of a semiautomatic pistol pointing to the words: “Thoughts don’t stop. Help me,” he said.
Another section was a drawing of a bullet with the words “Blood Everywhere” written on it. Between the drawing of the gun and the bullet is one of a person who appears to have been shot twice and is bleeding, McDonald said.
“Underneath that figure is a picture of a laughing emoji,” McDonald said.
The note also said, according to McDonald: “My life is useless” and “The world is dead.”
James and Jennifer Crumbley were “immediately summoned to the school,” McDonald said. A counselor met with the parents and the boy, who had altered the drawing by crossing out the pictures of the gun and the bloody figure, along with the words, according to McDonald.
The parents were told they must bring their son to therapy within 48 hours, McDonald said. Neither parent asked their son to show them the gun or “inspected his backpack for the presence of the gun, which he carried with him,” according to McDonald.
The parents dropped out of school and the boy was sent back to class.
According to McDonald, when news of the shooting broke, Jennifer Crumbley sent her son a text message: “Ethan, don’t do it.” James Crumbley called 911 to report that a weapon was missing and that his son could be the attacker.
McDonald said investigators discovered that the gun used in the shooting had been locked in a drawer in the couple’s bedroom.
Addressing reporters, McDonald said he accused the parents in part to emphasize responsibility for gun possession, but that the facts of the case were egregious in themselves.
“I am angry as a mother. I am angry as a prosecutor. I am angry as a person who lives in this county,” she said. “There were a lot of things that could have been so simple to prevent and, yes, there was a perfectly executed response, and he was stopped immediately and we have great law enforcement and good training.”
“But, like I said before, four children were killed and then another seven were injured, so, yeah, I think we should all be very angry.”
School authorities: “no disciplinary action was necessary”
When school officials met with parents before the shooting, no disciplinary action was warranted, the school district superintendent said Thursday.
“No disciplinary action was warranted. There are no records of any discipline action at the school,” Tim Throne, the superintendent of Oxford Community Schools, said Thursday in a video statement. “Yes, this student had contact with our main office. And yes, his parents were on campus on November 30.”
There is a “strong possibility” that Crumbley had the gun he allegedly used in the shooting in his backpack during the meeting, McDonald told CNN Thursday night.
The school’s video surveillance cameras will allow investigators to “draw an exact map and literally see what the perpetrator did” from that meeting to the shooting and his arrest, Oakland County Sheriff Bouchard told CNN on Friday. the morning.
The attacker had the gun “on his person or in his backpack or somehow concealed it” somewhere in the school, he said.
Another warning sign had come this Monday, the day before the shooting, when another teacher “saw and heard something that she found disturbing” related to Crumbley’s behavior in the classroom, Bouchard said. School authorities had a counseling session with Crumbley about the behavior in question, and his parents were notified by phone, Bouchard added.
Crumbley’s defense attorney asked the court on Wednesday to plead not guilty on behalf of his client. CNN has attempted to contact Crumbley’s parents and is trying to identify their attorney and a new attorney for their son.
The school looks like a “war zone,” says the superintendent
Two days after the deadly attack, Oxford High School looks “like a war zone,” Throne told his community from the school in the 13-minute video posted on YouTube.
“This school is in shambles right now,” he said, adding that repairs could take weeks.
The shooting ended the lives of 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin; Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14 years old; and Justin Shilling, 17, according to authorities.
Throne praised the students and staff for the way they handled the threat of an active attacker, during which some administrators performed CPR and students used desks and chairs to barricade themselves inside classrooms for protection.
More than 100 calls were made to 911 to report the shooting as police arrived at the school at 12:52 p.m. local time, Bouchard said. Within “two or three minutes” of the arrival of the officers, the attacker had surrendered.
“I think they literally saved lives by shooting down a suspect who had a loaded firearm still in the building,” the sheriff said.
– Mark Morales, Sonia Moghe, Carolyn Sung, Sahar Akbarzai, Taylor Romine, Shimon Prokupecz, Kristina Sgueglia and Adrienne Broaddus contributed to this report.
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