PONTIAC, Mich. — James Crumbley, whose teenage son killed four students in the 2021 Oxford High School shooting, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter by an Oakland County, Mich., jury Thursday in a verdict that caps two separate trials that made Crumbley and his wife the first parents of a school shooter to face homicide-level charges for their child’s crime.
Washington
Father of Oxford shooter found guilty of involuntary manslaughter
The jury of six men and six women deliberated for nearly 11 hours before finding Crumbly, 47, guilty of all four involuntary manslaughter counts. The verdict concluded the brisk eight-day trial that largely lacked the drama and hostility between the defense and prosecutors seen in Jennifer Crumbley’s trial, which ended last month with her conviction on four counts of involuntary manslaughter.
The Crumbleys’ son, Ethan, was sentenced last year to life without parole for killing Hana St. Juliana, 14; Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 17, and injuring seven others in the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting. The shooter, who was 15 years old when he committed the killings, was charged as an adult and later pleaded guilty to 24 charges, including first-degree murder and terrorism. On the day of the shooting, he hid in his backpack a 9mm Sig Sauer gun that his father bought four days prior as an early Christmas gift.
James and Jennifer Crumbley faced identical charges but were tried separately in a closely watched case that sits at the vanguard of a new strategy by some prosecutors to look more broadly at who can or should be held accountable when a child harms others with a gun. Sentencing for both Crumbleys is set for April 9.
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald took the rare step of charging the Crumbleys within days of the shooting, and that move has since been followed in cases like the deadly 2022 Fourth of July shooting in Highland Park, Ill.: Prosecutors last year secured a guilty plea from the shooter’s father for misdemeanor reckless conduct for his role in facilitating his son’s gun access.
James Crumbley was silent and shook his head as the jury foreperson read the verdict. Meanwhile, Nicole Beausoleil, Baldwin’s mother, leaned forward and cried. As the courtroom cleared, families of the victims stopped to shake hands and hug McDonald.
In an emotional news conference following the verdict, McDonald and the parents of the victims called out the urgency of curbing gun violence and improving mental health support for children.
“I refuse to take a victory lap with these prosecutions, it will not bring back these kids,” McDonald said, noting that while the three convictions were critical, they alone won’t solve gun violence.
“Gun violence is the number one cause of death for children in this country and it is a public health crisis,” McDonald said. “And we will not be able to address it until we start treating it like a public health crisis — and yes, access to guns is a critical piece of that.”
Steve St. Juliana, Hana’s father, and Buck Myre, Tate’s father, both said tackling gun violence and mental health are bipartisan issues that demand immediate action.
“We complain about Second Amendment rights, or we say, ‘Oh there’s not enough money […] for mental health issues,” St. Juliana said. “We can put people on the moon and we can build skyscrapers [but] we can’t keep … our kids safe in schools. I think people just need to wake up.”
Gun-control advocates praised the verdict. Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety, said parents have a responsibility to prevent children from accessing guns.
“Once again, today’s guilty verdict of James Crumbley further underscores this critical duty of responsible gun ownership,” Suplina said. “The deadly shooting at Oxford High School in 2021 should have been prevented had Jennifer and James Crumbley taken basic precautions, like securely storing firearms in the home, to prevent their 15-year-old son from bringing a gun to school and killing four children and wounding seven others.”
Much evidence and nearly all of the witnesses from James Crumbley’s trial were already previewed in his wife’s trial. The second time around, the trial moved quicker, with fewer clashes between lawyers and more precise arguments from each side. Most notably, after Jennifer Crumbley gave testimony that may have doomed her for the jury, James Crumbley decided not take the stand in his own trial; the defense’s only witness was Karen Crumbley, his sister.
The prosecution’s overarching argument remained the same: James Crumbley bought a gun for a teen who was clearly troubled, failed to secure it, and failed to take steps before the shooting and on that morning that could have prevented the eventual tragedy.
“It only took one tragically small measure of ordinary care to avoid four deaths,” McDonald said during closing arguments.
Prosecutors pointed to the morning of the shooting, when the Crumbley parents were summoned to the school after a teacher saw their son draw pictures of a gun, a bullet-riddled body and a cry-laughing face on a math assignment alongside phrases like, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me,” “the world is dead,” and “blood everywhere.” McDonald said Crumbley failed a legal duty to prevent his son from harming others with actions that were or should have been “foreseeable” to Crumbley.
The jury saw journal entries where the shooter wrote desperate musings like: “I have zero HELP for my mental problems and it’s causing me to shoot up the f—ing school” and “I want help but my parents won’t listen to me so I can’t get any help.”
Jurors also saw the shooter’s text to his friend where he wrote, “I told my dad to take me to the doctor yesterday, but he gave me some pills and told me to suck it up.”
McDonald said Crumbley knew his son was having some kind of trouble as she ticked off the clues: His son was upset about the family dog dying, about his friend moving away, about his grandmother dying, about pandemic isolation; he knew his son had looked up bullets and watched violent videos — and had seen the drawing the morning of the shooting.
“How many times does this kid have to say it?” McDonald said, raising her voice during closing.
Donning a pair of blue gloves, McDonald picked up the murder weapon during the final part of her closing and quickly inserted a cable lock into the gun.
“It only takes ten seconds. Ten seconds of the easiest, simplest thing,” McDonald said. The cable lock was later found in the home, unused, and with an accompanying safety manual.
Defense attorney Marielle Lehman said the charges against Crumbley are “assumptions and hindsight.”
It’s easy to look back at warning signs and call them obvious, Lehman said. Prosecutors presented the shooter’s journal entries that detailed his desire — and later plans — to shoot up the school, as well as text messages with his best friend where he talked about handling the gun his father purchased.
Lehman said there was no evidence Crumbley saw his son’s journal or text messages with friends, or knew his son accessed guns and ammunition without supervision. She also cited a prosecutor’s witness, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agent Brett Brandon, who testified “‘there are multiple ways to store a firearm responsibly,’ not just the way the prosecution described,” Lehman said.
Crumbley told sheriff’s deputies during an interview following the shooting that he kept the gun hidden in a case in his bedroom armoire and hid the bullets separately under a pile of jeans.
Lehman sought to distance Crumbley from the prosecution’s characterization that the weapon belonged to the shooter.
“If it really were his son’s gun, why was it hidden in [James’] bedroom? In a location his son was not aware of?” Lehman said.
The defense also asserted publicly for the first time that while Crumbley knew his son had access to a gun, the school did, too.
School staffers testified they thought the shooter was troubled, but saw him more as a danger to himself rather than others.
Neither the parents nor school staff searched the shooter’s backpack before he was sent back to class. Little more than two hours later, Crumbley learned there was a shooting at the school and dialed 911 explaining a gun was missing from the home and that he and his wife had been called to speak with his son’s counselor that morning.
“I think my son took the gun,” Crumbley is heard on tape saying frantically. “I’m freaking out.”
Shannon Smith, an attorney for Jennifer Crumbley, said she and her client were declining interviews.
“We believe the victims, their families, and the community need and deserve the space and time to begin healing from this tragedy,” Smith said in a statement late Thursday.
The state of Washington is getting a seventh temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Marysville Washington Temple was announced Sunday night during a devotional in the Marysville Washington Stake by Elder Hugo E. Martinez, a General Authority Seventy in the church’s United States West Area Presidency.
“We are pleased to announce the construction of a temple in Marysville, Washington,” the First Presidency said in a statement. “The specific location and timing of the construction will be announced later. This is a reason for all of us to rejoice and express gratitude for such a significant blessing — one that will allow more frequent access to the ordinances, covenants and power that can only be found in the house of the Lord.”
The other temples in Washington are the Columbia River, Moses Lake, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma and Vancouver temples.
The church has 214 temples in operation. Plans for another 170 temples have been announced; many of those temples are in various stages of planning and construction.
Sunday’s temple announcement follows the new practice of the church’s First Presidency, which determines where temples will be built — and when and how they will be announced.
The First Presidency directed a General Authority Seventy to announce the first temple in Maine at a fireside there in December.
In January, church President Dallin H. Oaks said the Maine announcement set the pattern for future temple announcements.
“The best place to announce a temple is in that temple district,” he told the Deseret News.
The First Presidency will continue to decide where future temples will be built. It then will “assign someone else to make the announcement in the place where the temple will be built,” he said.
This pattern came to him as a strong impression after he assumed leadership of the church in October, following the death of his friend, President Russell M. Nelson.
This came as a strong impression to him shortly after he assumed the leadership of the church, President Oaks said.
The church remains in the midst of an aggressive temple-building era. President Nelson announced 200 new temples from 2018 to 2025. All but one were announced at general conference.
Five dozen temples are now under construction.
President Oaks now has overseen the announcement of two temples, neither at a general conference.
At the October conference he said that “with the large number of temples now in the very earliest phases of planning and construction, it is appropriate that we slow down the announcement of new temples.”
Ten new temples are scheduled to be dedicated in the next six months.
- May 3: Davao Philippines Temple.
- May 3: Lindon Utah Temple.
- May 31: Bacolod Philippines Temple.
- June 7: Yorba Linda California Temple.
- June 7: Willamette Valley Oregon Temple.
- Aug. 16: Belo Horizonte Brazil Temple.
- Aug. 16: Cleveland Ohio Temple.
- Aug. 30: Phnom Penh Cambodia Temple.
- Oct. 11: Miraflores Guatemala City Guatemala Temple.
- Oct. 18: Managua Nicaragua Temple.
Two-thirds of the 170 temples still to be built are outside the United States.
Temples are distinct from the meetinghouses where Latter-day Saints worship Jesus Christ each Sunday. Temples are closed on Sundays, but they open during the week as sanctuaries where church members go to find peace, make covenants with God and perform proxy ordinances for deceased relatives.
On a perfect day in Seattle for football, Washington took the field inside Husky Stadium for its first scrimmage of spring practice, and ahead of his third season at the helm, Jedd Fisch seemed pleased with the results.
“Guys played and competed their ass off,” he said after the Huskies ran 120 plays. “That’s the type of day we want to have…We have a lot to work on, but we’re excited that today gave us this opportunity.”
The 120 plays had a little bit of everything, but the biggest thing the Huskies showed during the day was that, despite the inexperience that Fisch’s coaching staff is looking to lean on at several positions, there’s plenty of talent littering the roster. The best example of that is sophomore safety Paul Mencke Jr., who had his best practice in a Husky uniform after Fisch announced on Saturday that senior CJ Christian is out for the year after suffering a torn Achilles tendon during Tuesday’s practice at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center.
“Paul’s done a great job of competing and being physical and playing fast, and you could see over these three years, he’s really grown into understanding now the system, and what’s asked of him as a safety,” Fisch said. “I think there’s a lot of in him that he wants to be like (safeties coach Taylor) Mays. He sees himself as a tall, linear, big hitter. So when you have your coach that is known for that type of play, I think Paul has done a great job.”
Mencke was all over the field. Not only did he lay some big hits, just like his safeties coach did during his time at USC, but the former four-star recruit also tallied a pair of pass breakups, an interception in a 7-on-7 period, and multiple strong tackles to hold ball carriers to limited yards.
While the defense did a good job getting pressure throughout the day and making the quarterbacks hold the ball with different looks on the back end, with safety Alex McLaughlin, linebacker Donovan Robinson, and edge rusher Logan George all among the players credited for a sack, quarterback Demond Williams Jr. got an opportunity to show off how he’s improved ahead of his junior year.
Early on, he showed off his well-known speed and athleticism, making the correct decision on a read option, pulling the ball and scampering for a 25-yard gain before displaying his touch. Throughout the day, his favorite target was junior receiver Rashid Williams, whom he found on several layered throws of 15-plus yards in the various scrimmage periods of practice.
On a day when every able-bodied member of the team was able to get several reps of live action, here are some of the other noteworthy plays from the day.
Spring practice notebook
- Freshman cornerback Jeron Jones was unable to participate in the scrimmage and was spotted working off to the side with the rest of the players rehabbing their injuries.
- The running backs delivered a pair of big blows on the day. First, cornerback Emmanuel Karnley was on the receiving end of a big hit from redshirt freshman Quaid Carr before the former three-star recruit ripped off a 13-yard touchdown run on the next play. Later on, every player on offense had a lot of fun cheering on freshman Ansu Sanoe after he leveled Zaydrius Rainey-Sale, letting the sophomore linebacker hear all about it when the play was whistled dead.
- Sophomore wide receiver Justice Williams put together a strong day with several contested catches, showing off his strong hands and 6-foot-4 frame, including a 25-yard catch and run off a drag route from backup quarterback Elijah Brown.
- Of all the tackles for a loss the Huskies were able to rack up throughout the day, two stood out. First, junior defensive tackle Elinneus Davis burst through the middle of the line to wrap up freshman running back Brian Bonner. Later on, freshman outside linebacker Ramzak Fruean wasn’t even touched as he shot through a gap in the offensive line to track down a play from behind, letting the entire offensive sideline know about the play on his way back to his own bench.
- The Huskies experimented with several defensive line combinations on Saturday, and for the first time this spring, it felt like freshman Derek Colman-Brusa took the majority of his reps alongside someone other than Davis, who he said has taken on an older brother role to help mentor the top-ranked in-state prospect in the 2026 class.
“Elinneus is a phenomenal guy. Great work ethic. He’s kind of taken on that older brother mentor for me. He’s been a great help just to learn plays and learn the scheme. Can’t say enough good things about the guy.”
- Ball State transfer Darin Conley took a handful of reps with the first team, while rotating with Colman-Brusa, who got a lot of work in alongside Sacramento State transfer DeSean Watts.
Twenty Sioux Falls School District art teachers have their own original pieces on display at the Washington Pavilion’s University Gallery now through May 31.
The “Teachers as Artists” exhibit showcases their work not just as educators, but as artists inside and outside of the classroom, and highlights how art education builds critical thinking, creative problem-solving and self-expression skills.
Edison Middle School art teacher Meagan Turbak-Fogarty said she dreamt of such a showcase since her first year teaching.
She and Kathy Dang, an art teacher at Marcella LeBeau Elementary School who also serves on the city’s Visual Arts Committee, partnered with the city and Washington Pavilion to bring the showcase to life.
Turbak-Fogarty has taught at Edison for five years and said her passion for art is “instantly felt” on her classroom walls, but that students have asked where they could see her art in the classroom, or what kind of art she creates in her own time.
“I always felt the feeling that I stand in front of all these kids every single day and preach about how much I love art, and how art has changed my life,” Turbak-Fogarty said. “That got me thinking, ‘I want to show them.’”
Some of her works on display at the Pavilion include art she created in her first year teaching, including a large Cheetos bag she created as an example for her eighth grade classroom when they were working on a large chip bag project. Turbak-Fogarty said she loves painting, working with acrylics and unconventional materials.
“I wanted to show my students that art can be anything,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be hanging up in a museum to be considered art.”
Continuing to do her own art while teaching the subject helps keep her inspired, Turbak-Fogarty explained, adding that it helps her push her own creativity when it comes to projects she works on with students.
Samantha Levisay, an art teacher at John Harris Elementary School, showed three pieces in the show — “Moments in Time,” “Midnight Butterfly Garden” and “Whimsy” — with the same mixed media, watercolor and printmaking skills that she teaches in different units at every elementary grade.
Levisay educates her students that “art is everywhere.” She said her favorite memories as an art teacher are “moments when I show students a lesson, and they take it even further.”
“Kids are so creative; I marvel at them all the time,” she said. “They inspire me every day with their endless creativity and imagination.”
Roosevelt High School art teacher Ruth Hillman showed two pieces in the show: “The Potato on the Wall,” a mixed media work, and a collection of her handmade clay charms in a shadow box.
She also wore some of her art — miniature potato earrings made of clay.
Hillman is in her third year at RHS. When she’s not teaching art, she’s also making art, and sells her charms at shows like the Art Collective.
Washington High School art teacher Mollie Potter displayed a three-part painting series at the show that she said were inspired by her English language learner students’ stories, and how teachers help students “take flight,” as represented by balloons, parachutes and kites in her work.
Porter said she is often inspired by her students’ art in the classroom; for example, one former student was obsessed with swans, and Porter said she later created a painting inspired by one of the student’s stories about swans.
At an April 17 reception, Mayor Paul TenHaken emphasized the arts as an “important economic driver in the community,” and said the show honored educators “who are artists in and of themselves,” but who might not have had a chance to display their art outside the classroom before.
“This is a way for us to honor them and show their incredible work,” TenHaken said.
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