OAN’s Abril Elfi
11:09 AM – Tuesday, February 6, 2024
The mother of the Michigan school shooter, Ethan Crumbley, has been found guilty on four counts of involuntary manslaughter.
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On Tuesday, Jennifer Crumbley was read her guilty verdict after the teenager accused his parents of failing to help him prior to the 2021 attack where Crumbley took the lives of four students at Oxford High School.
After deliberating on the case for ten hours, the 12-person jury, six men and six women, came to a decision in Oxford, Michigan.
The judge thanked the jurors for their work on what she described as “the hardest things you’ve ever done” after the verdict was read.
Following the announcement of the verdict, two police officers put Crumbley in handcuffs and led him out of the courtroom.
The prosecution argued that Jennifer is responsible for the deaths of the victims because she was “grossly negligent” by gifting her son a gun and failing to provide him with the proper help for his mental health issues.
“It’s a rare case that takes some really egregious facts,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in closing arguments on Friday. “It takes the unthinkable, and she has done the unthinkable, and because of that, four kids have died.”
According to evidence revealed in the courtroom, the teen had a journal where he described his plan to shoot up the school. He also wrote that his parents would not listen to his pleas for help.
“I have zero help for my mental problems and it’s causing me to shoot up the … school,” Ethan Crumbley, then 15-years-old, wrote in his journal. “My parents won’t listen to me about help or therapist,” the boy said, adding that he would spend his life in prison and that “many people have about a day left to live.”
When Jennifer took the stand last week, she stated that she “would not have done anything differently.”
During her trial, it was also revealed that Jennifer was having an affair with a married firefighter before the shooting and that she told her lover that she had ‘failed miserably’ as a parent after the tragic event.
Her lover, Brian Meloche, then responded with “you didn’t do this” and told her to be careful since the “FBI is involved.”
“Be careful of anything you type on messenger or text,” he wrote later. “The FBI is involved, they can access anything and everything.”
Jennifer claimed that on the day of the shooting, she and her spouse were unable to bring Ethan home because they were both employed.
However, Meloche testified that she told him she could leave work early that morning to meet with him.
He went on to say that they usually had their covert rendezvous in the parking lot across from her place of employment in the mornings of workdays.
The mother’s case has revolved around a meeting that took place a few hours prior to the shooting between the school administration and the Crumbley family.
Ethan’s school advised that he seek assistance as soon as possible, but the Crumbley’s refused to take him home because they had to go back to their jobs. Their son continued to attend school, and he later pointed a gun at other students from his backpack.
The Crumbley’s are the first parents in the United States to face charges related to a child-perpetrated mass shooting at a school. In March, James Crumbley, 47, will appear for his own trial.
The 17-year-old entered a guilty plea and is currently serving his sentence of life in prison.
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