Today, Explained - The shooter's parents

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

The mass killing at Oxford High School in Michigan may seem comparable to those that preceded it, but the aftermath has taken several new turns. Today’s show was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, engineered by Paul Mounsey, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and edited by Sean Rameswaram who also serves as host. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The order of events that lead up to the shooting happening are fairly distinct. Alex McLennan has been covering the tragedy for WDET public radio in Detroit. And the fact that there are charges coming with this that haven't been sought in school shootings before, there's a terrorism charge. One count of terrorism causing death, four counts of first degree murder, seven counts of assault with intent to murder, and 12 counts of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony. And the parents are being charged, which will be a really interesting precedent. Today, I'm announcing charges against the shooter's parents. James Crumbly is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. Jennifer Crumbly is also charged

with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. Okay, well, let's talk about all of those things in the order you laid them out, starting with the lead up to the shooting. What about the lead up to the shooting made it sort of unusual? There was a fairly short lead up to it. November 26th was Black Friday. James Crumbly, who is the father of Ethan Crumbly, who was the eventual shooter, purchased a Sig Sauer 9mm handgun, which is kind of like a pistol-type gun, on Black Friday. And on Saturday, his mom posted on social media saying that they were having mother-son time, testing out his new Christmas present.

He goes to school on Monday, the day before the shooting. School staff had caught him looking up gun ammo on his phone. out his new Christmas present. He goes to school on Monday, the day before the shooting. School staff had caught him looking up gun ammo on his phone. They sent him to a counselor at the school. He said that it's because, you know, shooting was a family hobby and the parents were contacted, but they never showed up. When the prosecutor was announcing charges, she had said that they'd found a text message to Ethan from his mom, Jennifer, basically saying, LOL, I'm not mad about it. You just have to learn not to get caught.

His mom said, LOL, I'm not mad that you got caught looking up ammo at school for your new gun. Just don't get caught next time. This is a 15-year-old. Right, and shooting is a hobby for people. So, like, that's one thing. But the parents didn't respond to the school when they called them. Then that was the day before the shooting. In the morning of the shooting, he was caught by a teacher drawing a violent picture in class doodling.

What did it look like? It had bullets on it. It had a body that appeared to have been shot twice on it, according to the prosecutor, that was bleeding. And it had phrases kind of written around on it. A drawing of a semi-automatic handgun pointing at the words, quote, the thoughts won't stop, help me, end quote. Further down the drawing are the words, quote, my life is useless, end quote. And to the right the drawing are the words, quote, my life is useless, end quote. And to the right of that are the words, quote, the world is dead, end quote. So the teacher obviously took action on that, had him go to the office. They called the parents.

The parents came in. This is the day of the shooting. This is the morning of the shooting. And he then hit, I guess, after he got caught, he started like, you know, scratching stuff out and scribbling things out to try to cover it up but it was what was there was still kind of there so when the parents came in they were given 48 hours to get him into counseling or else child services were going to be called but the parents were pretty resistant to everything that was happening they refused to take him out of school that day, left him in class, left without him, and never asked him about his gun or anything, which during the whole time was in his backpack while he was in the office.

And he returned to class despite being on that kind of 48-hour clock. And then around 1 p.m. he went into a bathroom and came out with the gun in his hand and started firing. How many people are injured and how many people are killed? 11 people were injured. It was 10 students and one teacher. And then of the injuries, four students were killed. And Ethan survives. He survived and he had more rounds with him.

But when law enforcement showed up, he, you know, stopped and turned himself in. He then, which is, you know, your legal right, he wasn't cooperating further without an attorney. Tell me more about what he's eventually charged with. There's a fairly extensive laundry list of charges. Four counts of murder, obviously, for the four that died. And there's a terrorism charge in there. And the prosecutor left the door open to potentially add more as things go forward. Why did the prosecutors bring this terrorism charge, which is sort of exceptional? Karen McDonald is the Oakland County prosecutor where

this happened. And she basically cited the emotional impact on everybody that was there. What about all the children who ran screaming, hiding under desks? What about all the children at home right now who can't eat and can't sleep and can't imagine a world where they could ever step back, foot back in that school? Those are victims too, and so are their families, and so is the community. And the charge of terrorism reflects that. it. You knew it was going to be dangerous to human life because you were shooting people and with an intent to intimidate is essentially the angle that they'll have to go at for this. It'll be an interesting precedent because I know anti-terrorism laws are different in every state. In Michigan, there seems to be a window for that. And then not long after they charge him, they come and charge his parents, huh? While the shooter was the one who entered the high school and pulled the trigger, there

are other individuals who contributed to this, to the events on November 30th, and it's my intention to hold them accountable as well. Yeah, and this is where it gets kind of complicated. They're charging him with involuntary manslaughter for the four that died, but there were a lot more people than that injured. He's being tried as an adult, but his parents are being tried for responsibility. And that's going to be kind of an interesting line to draw. Can you charge the parents if they're being prosecuted as an adult? And once these charges on the parents are announced, Ethan's parents book it? They booked it before the charges were announced, it seems. We activated a manhunt when charges were issued to locate them immediately.

Everyone knew the night before that there were going to be charges, and the morning of, the parents had made a withdrawal from an ATM. It was about $4,000. Apparently, they turned off their cell phones, which hasn't been mentioned too much, but was brought up during the arraignment. Once the charges were announced on Friday, they had until, I think the arraignment time was set for 4 p.m. You know, that came and went and nothing had happened. The manhunt had started before the arraignment time was set because the law enforcement seemed to understand that they had been out of contact with their attorneys at that point. They were ghosting

their attorneys. We had communication that the couple was not responding to texts or phone calls of their attorney. So again, to us, that's irrelevant. We're looking for them. If they show up, fine. But we're not going to sit at the front desk and tap our fingers until they come in. But ultimately, they were found hiding in Detroit in a commercial building. At approximately 1.30 in the morning, the two suspects were taken into custody. At 11 Bellevue in Detroit, they were in an art studio. And it's about 40 miles away from Oxford and over a county line from where they're being prosecuted. Our fugitive apprehension team took custody and possession of them, and they were formally lodged in our jail where they remain at about 0300, about 3 o'clock in the morning.

So now mom, dad, and son are all being held in the same jail. Is that right? Yeah, but they won't be allowed to intermingle or anything like that. And that was something that was asked of the Oakland County Sheriff, Mike Boussard. No talking, no communication. They're all three in isolation. On top of the school shooting, you have all of these exceptional charges. You've got the parents booking it and then being found.

It's just this extremely dramatic and emotional story. How is the community reacting in Oxford and Oakland, some 30, 40 miles north of Detroit? The community hasn't had a shooting like this before, so it's certainly a shock to the system, as it were. There's been a lot of support for the families of the surviving people and the ones who didn't survive. One of the kids who was shot and died was an organ donor. There was a big public display by the hospital. When word got out on social media, friends, family, loved ones came out to want to show their support to the Schilling family. The plan right now is at some point the family will come up to the windows and look down and see this outpouring of support. The Lions won a football game this weekend,

which is rare enough by itself, and the coach was dedicating the game ball. This game ball goes to the whole Oxford community. All those were affected. I hope they were all watching today and were able to enjoy that win and we could take their minds off it for whatever, maybe three hours. There's also a sense in the community of frustration from some people with the high school, and that's something where maybe laws will have to be evaluated and stuff, because you can't just go and search somebody's belongings without a reason. But if the kid is caught making a very violent drawing, could we at minimum make a rule to check their backpack?

Given the school had no way of knowing they had that, but there's like such clear like lead up to it over a short period of time that like any little thing could have taken care of this and nothing happened. So there's a lot of frustration there. Hannah St. Juliana, age 14, a volleyball player and a basketball player. Madison Baldwin, age 17, a talented artist and big sister. Tate Meyer, a junior football player, an honor student, Justin Schilling, age 15, co-captain of the Oxford bowling team, and a golfer. Thank you. software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month.

And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained. Ramp.com slash explained. R-A-M-P dot com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. My name is Jillian Peterson. I'm an associate professor of criminology at Hamlin University, and I'm co-president of The Violence Project. What's The Violence Project?

The Violence Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research center that's focused on reducing violence in society using data and research. We heard early in the show that the parents of Ethan Crumbly are being charged with involuntary manslaughter for their alleged role in the lead-up to this shooting in Oxford. How often are parents charged in these cases, in these school shootings? It is actually very rare. There's been a few cases where parents have been charged for their children doing other sorts of shootings. But in our database, which tracks mass shootings in which four or more people were killed, if we look at school shootings, there's never been a parent charged in our database. And never, but 60% of the guns that are used in those school

shootings are coming from parents. That's the most common way that kids are getting their guns that they use. So what does it take to get a parent charged for a child conducting a school shooting? Yeah, this is sort of new territory, actually. So the charges that they are facing in voluntary manslaughter means that there was no premeditation. They didn't intend for anyone to die. But they were so reckless and so grossly negligent that they weren't thinking about the consequences of their actions. And that caused people to die. So the prosecution definitely has some work to do to sort of lay that case out. Do we know what the laws are in Michigan and even across the country regarding keeping a gun away from a minor in the house? It's really this patchwork of laws across the country when it comes to requiring safe storage. And we know that less than half of states have anything on the books. So the strictest

one is in Massachusetts, where you're required to have your gun locked whenever it's stored. And there's places like in California, where a parent could be arrested for having a gun that a child could access in the home, but that would require going and kind of knocking on doors with search warrants, which just isn't done. In Michigan, there's no law requiring safe storage. And of course, in this particular case in Michigan, it sounds like there were just so many red flags. The kid was looking up ammunition in class. He was leaving these horrific notes in class.

They had had a meeting that very day. This too feels pretty exceptional that there are this many red flags, right? It is and it isn't. I think in many ways, the Oxford shooting matches a lot of the school shootings that we've covered in our research and in our book, where it's a white male student of the school. They're in a noticeable crisis. They're leaking their plans. They're crying out for help. They're taking their parents' guns. So all of those patterns we see over and over and over again. I think what is unique about this case is the fact that it was brought to the

parents' attention right before the shooting, and they seem to have dismissed it. Does the school bear some of the responsibility here? I know you're saying this is the first time we're seeing the parents being held to account so forcefully, but has a school ever been held to account? Should the school have said, hey, let us see your bag. We're going to search it for the weapon. I mean, in retrospect, it's so easy to say, of course they should have. And best practices would be that the school should really have a team approach, either a crisis response team or a threat assessment team, but some approach. So it's not resting on the hands of one individual to decide what to do with a case like this.

But threats this year are just absolutely through the roof. So schools are dealing with threats on a daily basis across the country, and they're having to decide what's serious, what's a joke, who has real access, who doesn't. And it's a really hard position to put schools in over and over again. They're not adequately resourced and they just don't have the time and energy to really investigate each of these threats like they need to be. Tell me more. I didn't realize threats were through the roof this year. So we have been tracking threats of school shootings.

And if you look at the last three years, like 2018, 2019, it's around 30 threats a year on average if we just look at the month of September. This year in September, we had 151 threats that we identified. So that's an astronomical increase. What is going on? Is this schools coming back and kids are maladjusted or something? What's up? I think so. I think this is a lot of the risk factors that we know of when it comes to school shootings are on the rise due to the pandemic. So things like social isolation and depression, hopelessness, suicidality, spending a lot of time online, and firearm sales is also at record highs over the last year. So there's just more access to guns. How are communities reacting to this, what sounds like an exponential rise in threats? Yeah, schools are doing all sorts of things,

from canceling classes to providing escorts to students to really extreme things like there was a school in Idaho that kind of went viral because they actually banned backpacks. And so you see these pictures of kids carrying their books in and laundry baskets and wagons. Another student brought his laundry basket of books to class, which is good, could serve double duty, right? You could always fill it with those ripe gym clothes. I think schools don't know what to do, but they feel like they have to do something. And so one of the reasons that we've been doing this research and writing this book is that there are things that schools can do beyond things like banning backpacks and putting in more bulletproof glass. For a lot of schools, they're taking a lot of their resources

and putting them into things like lockdown drills and school resource officers and doors that are bulletproof and angles around classrooms so bullets can't hit them. And the reality is none of that stuff really prevents shootings. So if we could take all of the resources we're putting into that piece

and move it into prevention, I think we could have an impact. Bulletproof doors don't prevent shootings? Yeah. The most common person by far, if someone's going to perpetrate a school shooting, over 90% of the time, it's a student of that school. So a lot of the things we do are to keep these kind of bad guy monsters out of the school. So a lot of the things we do are to keep these kind of bad guy monsters out of the school. But the reality is the perpetrators in the building, they're going through the drills, they're going in and out of the security, they're sitting next to our children in classrooms. In some ways, that makes prevention harder, but in many ways, it makes it easier

because we can think about what can we do in our school buildings to make sure no kid in there ever wants to do this. What would you rather do with those resources? You know, one of the things we learned in doing this research is that there are laws that we want to change, certainly, but there are things that schools and communities and even individuals can do in their own lives that can have an impact that don't need the passage of a law. So things like putting in better crisis communication systems and training staff in suicide prevention and making sure we're funding school-based mental health, a lot of those things can really happen on the local level. How about a federal law saying, you know, you got to keep your guns out of reach from your kids,

which seems like pretty logical, bare minimum stuff. Is there support for something like that? So there could be more consistency from state to state? Safe storage of firearms is actually something that has really good support on both sides of the aisle from gun owners and from non-gun owners. And it would make a big impact. There was a recent study from 2015 that found that one in five gun owners with a child in their household leaves their guns locked and loaded. So ready to just grab, which is the least secure way you can store it. So it's something that everybody tends to agree on. It has a huge diffusion of benefits. So it's not just about preventing mass shootings.

It's also preventing accidental shootings and suicides and domestic violence. There's estimates that it could reduce shootings in the home by 75%. So this is something that feels like it has good support. It feels easy. Just secure your guns and the impacts could be huge. And have you seen any positive movement in that direction since this Oxford shooting last week? I've heard people talking about it, which always happens in the wakes of these shootings as we do a lot of talking and then it tends to fade away. So this is something that I can hope

that we can keep the conversation going about even after this isn't in the news anymore. Jillian Peterson is with The Violence Project, and she's the co-author of The Violence Project, How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic. Earlier in the show, you heard from Alex McLennan from WDET Public Radio in Detroit. You can find and support his work at WDET.org. Our show today was produced by Victoria Chamberlain, engineered by Paul Mounsey, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and edited by me.

I'm Sean Ramos from It's Today Explained. Thank you.