Prosecutors rested their case Wednesday morning in the criminal trial of James Crumbley following four days of heavy testimony that attempted to show the Michigan father was partially responsible for his teenage son’s 2021 school shooting.
The race toward the trial’s end came without any clear indication if Crumbley will testify in his own defense, but his lawyer began its case Wednesday by calling his sister, Karen Crumbley.
On Tuesday, Crumbley appeared emotional when video from the shooting at Oxford High School committed by Ethan, then 15, was played for jurors.
The father averted his eyes from the footage, which did not include audio, and also wiped away tears when Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Detective Lt. Tim Willis testified how Ethan fatally shot four students days after Thanksgiving with a semi-automatic handgun purchased by Crumbley as an early Christmas gift.
“We had no idea what we were responding to. My police radio was blowing up with calls,” Willis said of the day of the shooting in suburban Detroit. “It was chaos,” he added.
Crumbley, 47, is on trial for four counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each of the students killed by his son, who pleaded guilty as an adult in the deaths and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Oakland County prosecutors called 15 witnesses in Crumbley’s trial, fewer than the 21 witnesses called in the trial of his wife, Jennifer, who was convicted by a jury last month on the same involuntary manslaughter charge.
Her landmark trial drew attention as the first time a parent in the U.S. was found at fault for a mass school shooting perpetrated by their child. She will be sentenced in April and faces up to 15 years in prison per count.
James Crumbley’s trial hinges on a similar accusation that as his son’s parent, he knew of the teen’s mental state and that he had access to firearms, yet prosecutors allege he was still “grossly negligent” by failing to prevent the deaths from happening. He is not accused of knowing about the attack beforehand, which his son had warned about in journals.
Willis shared messages the shooter wrote over the months and days leading up to the massacre, including, “My parents won’t listen to me about help or a therapist,” “I will have to find where my dad hid my 9 mm before I can shoot the school,” and “I have access to the gun and the ammo. I am fully committed this to now.”
James Crumbley had told investigators he hid the handgun in an armoire and placed the ammunition underneath jeans in another drawer.
Much of the evidence presented and the witnesses called by the prosecution paralleled the case against Jennifer Crumbley.
But James Crumbley’s trial has moved at a faster clip with stark differences as well.
On the same day as opening statements last Thursday, Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Matthews signed a court order stipulating that Crumbley’s jail phone and electronic messages would be revoked — except for with his lawyer or legitimate clergy or for using his tablet for research — after he allegedly made “threatening statements” of an undisclosed nature.
During her trial, Jennifer Crumbley did choose to testify, telling jurors that she regretted her son’s actions, but ultimately she “wouldn’t have” done anything differently in how she parented him — testimony that would be analyzed by her trial’s jury during its deliberations.
Jennifer Crumbley’s personal life also became a central facet in how the prosecution chose to pick apart her parenting, calling on the man with whom she was having an extramarital affair to testify and focusing on how she paid attention to her hobbies over responding to her son’s text messages. Prosecutors also called co-workers of Jennifer Crumbley, who had been employed as a marketing director for a real estate company.
Jennifer Crumbley testified about her husband that she entrusted him with securing the family’s firearms, including the gun used by her son, but did not find him responsible with other duties, such as holding down a job, handling his money or even getting out of bed on time.
Jurors learned that James Crumbley had been working as a DoorDash driver around the time of the shooting, and would take his son to the shooting range. In text messages with a friend several months before the shooting at Oxford High School, Ethan wrote he was having “bad insomnia” and paranoia and suggested he had reached out to his parents and specifically asked his father to take him to the doctor.
“He just gave me some pills and told me to ‘Suck it up,'” Ethan texted.
He also sent his friend a video of him holding a gun about three months before the shooting. “My dad left it out so I thought, ‘Why not’ lol,” Ethan wrote.
Similar to his wife’s trial, Crumbley’s actions on the day of the shooting were widely discussed in testimony. That morning, the Crumbleys were summoned to Ethan’s school after a teacher found his math homework with a drawing of a gun, a person shot and messages, including, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”
Nicholas Ejak, Oxford High School’s dean of students at the time of the shooting, testified this week that James Crumbley told his son at the meeting that he had people to talk with and he could write in his journal.
“He expressed concern for his son,” Ejak said.
But both parents declined to take Ethan home and neither warned the school he had access to a gun; the teen would go on to commit the shooting later that day.
On cross-examination, defense lawyer Mariell Lehman got Ejak to confirm he did not think Ethan was an immediate threat nor initially believe he was the shooter despite the disturbing drawing that was found and knowledge that a teacher had also caught him looking at bullets on his phone in class a day earlier.
“In no way did you feel that Mr. Crumbley was being neglectful of his son?” Lehman asked Ejak, who had also testified at Jennifer Crumbley’s trial.
“No, I did not,” Ejak said.
Lehman also pushed back at Willis, the investigating detective, who on Thursday testified about what Ethan wrote in his journal about getting access to the gun.
“You don’t recall reading anything that says, ‘My dad told me where the gun and ammo were?'” Lehman asked. Willis agreed he hadn’t.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
