Jennifer Crumbley Guilty Of Manslaughter By Way Of Egregious Child Neglect
Good.
We are only a month and a week into this year, and so far there have been 13 unintended shootings by children who were handling guns left around them by a parent or some other irresponsible adult a parent left around them. These caused six deaths and eight injuries.
There have been seven school shootings, resulting in 14 injuries and two deaths. Since 2000, there have been about 516 school shootings in the United States. One of those shootings was committed by 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, who shot and killed four people at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Michigan, back in 2021. Crumbley pleaded guilty, and on December 9 of last year, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Yesterday, his mother, Jennifer Crumbley, who bought Crumbley the gun he used just days before his killing spree, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter — four counts for each of her son’s victims Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Justin Shilling, 17; and Hana St. Juliana, 14.
This will mark the first time a parent of a school shooter has been held responsible for his rampage, and in this case, it’s warranted. I say this as a person who is generally on team prison abolition.
Crumbley knew her son was unstable, and yet she and her husband (who will have his own trial soon) went and got him a gun and then didn’t even bother to lock it up. (The dad’s other guns were locked up — the code to their safe was apparently 000.) She joked with her son over text messages when the school called her about the fact that he was researching bullets at school and told him to not get caught.
On the very day of the shooting, the Crumbleys were called into the school to discuss some disturbing and violent drawings Ethan Crumbley had made in geometry class — such as a drawing of a gun along with the text “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me,” a picture of a bullet with the text “blood everywhere” and the text “my life is useless.”
They were asked to take him home. The Crumbleys refused, saying that they were both too busy at work and they didn’t want him to be at home alone if he was suicidal … and just left him at the school. It would later come out in court, from both Jennifer Crumbley and her boss, that she would have been able to take off for a family emergency like this, or bring her son into work with her. She just didn’t feel like it. It also came out that she was not all that busy after all, because she texted the fire fighter she was having an affair with to see if he wanted to get it on when she was done with the meeting.
Not long after, four people were dead, seven people were injured, and probably everyone who was there will likely have complex PTSD for which they will have to be treated the rest of their lives.
We don’t know that Ethan Crumbley has or was developing schizophrenia or something like it, and we’ll probably never know because the belief that he is not mentally ill was so integral to the prosecution’s case. That being said, it would not be unusual for the first signs of schizophrenia in a boy to emerge around the age of 15 and the fact that the Crumbleys were aware that he said he was hearing voices and feeling paranoid and didn’t even bother to take him to a psychologist is unbelievably irresponsible.
Jennifer Crumbley didn’t just buy a gun for a kid she had every reason to believe was otherwise stable. She knew he was unstable. She helped make him unstable. She went around telling anyone who would listen that he was an “oopsie” baby. When Ethan told her that he was dealing with severe mental health issues, she laughed it off and her husband told him to “suck it up.” He texted her claiming that there were demons in the house throwing bowls, and she ignored him because she was busy riding horses. He texted her saying he was afraid of intruders, and she ignored him then as well.
She and her husband neglected their child for years, left him at home by himself all of the time, spent piles of money on booze and horses and none on his obviously foundering mental health. Indeed, it appears as though she spent more time working on her weird love letter to Donald Trump than she ever did taking care of her damn kid.
A former neighbor told the Free Press she had concerns about their parenting long before Tuesday's tragedy.
Jennifer and James Crumbley often left their young son home alone while drinking at bars in downtown Lake Orion in 2014 and 2015, former neighbor Kayla LeMieux said. The boy would have been between 8 and 9 years old at that time.
It was so concerning to LeMieux, 28, that she said she made an anonymous phone complaint to the state’s Children’s Protective Services.
“When they were gone, he would come knock on our door,” LeMieux said of the boy. “They didn’t leave him with a phone.”
This was not a situation where her kid was out of control, but she was doing everything she could and still failed. She literally did not try anything other than giving him the gun he used to shoot up his school, because she thought that made him happy. She didn’t spend time with him, she didn’t listen to him, she didn’t bother to get him psychological help when he asked for it. She was told by his teachers that they were concerned about his violent drawings and bullet searches and thought he might commit suicide … and her first thought was not to take care of her son and ensure he didn’t kill himself, but to text her damn sidepiece about popping over to her work for a little afternoon delight.
All of this is to say that the gun wasn’t the only potential weapon she left unattended. There were a thousand little things she could have done differently that may have saved those lives and she chose not to do them.
Jennifer Crumbley will be sentenced on April 9 and faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for all four deaths.
PREVIOUSLY:
I hope this sends the much needed message to this crazy gun culture, one that those of us who grew up around guns hunting and target shooting had drilled into us: GUNS ARE NOT TOYS, THEY ARE NOT FOR THERAPY, THEY ARE NOT LIFESTYLE ACCESSORIES, THEY ARE NOT FOR TAKING CUTE PICTURES WITH, THEY ARE NOT A POLITICAL STATEMENT. THEY ARE DEADLY WEAPONS THAT MUST BE HANDLED WITH THE UTMOST CARE AND RESPECT AT ALL TIMES.
JFC, that poor kid. I realize he did the unthinkable and killed 4 people, but all those cries for help? All those times he was practically begging to be seen and heard and have his mommy take care of him, make him better? The level of neglect here goes beyond astonishing to criminal even before she bought the gun for him. She is subhuman filth (unsurprising she is a MAGAt) and that kid deserved better. I do wish there were some way to get him from prison to a proper mental health institution. As for mommy dearest? She can rot beneath the jail.