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.