James Crumbley, who bought gun used by son to kill 4 students at Michigan school, guilty of manslaughter

James Crumbley, the father of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley, has been convicted of involuntary manslaughter in four deaths. Photo / AP

The father of a Michigan school shooter was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter on Thursday, a second conviction against the teen’s parents who were accused of failing to secure a gun at home and doing nothing to address acute signs of his mental turmoil.

The jury verdict means James Crumbley has joined Jennifer Crumbley as a cause of the killing of four students at Oxford High School in 2021, even without pulling the trigger.

They had separate trials as the first US parents to be charged in a mass school shooting committed by their child. Jennifer Crumbley was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in February.

The verdicts — one each for the four victims — were read about 7.15pm at the end of a full day of deliberations.

James Crumbley heard the outcome through headphones worn throughout the trial because of a hearing problem. He shook his head from side to side as the jury foreman said “guilty”.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” Judge Cheryl Matthews told the jury of six men and six women. “I know how hard this has been on all of you.”

Prosecutors focused on two key themes at the trial: the parents’ response to a morbid drawing on Ethan Crumbley’s maths assignment a few hours before the shooting, and the teen’s access to a Sig Sauer 9mm handgun bought by James Crumbley only four days earlier.

Ethan made a ghastly drawing of a gun and a wounded man on a maths assignment and added disturbing phrases, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me. My life is useless.”

But James and Jennifer Crumbley declined to take Ethan home following a brief meeting at the school, and staff didn’t demand it. A counsellor, concerned about suicidal ideations, told them to seek help for the boy within 48 hours.

Ethan had told Shawn Hopkins he was sad over the death of his dog and grandmother and the loss of a friend who had abruptly moved away. He said the drawing was simply his jottings for a video game and he wasn’t planning to commit violence.

Neither he nor his parents told school officials about the gun they had just bought, according to trial testimony.

Hopkins had hoped Ethan would spend the day with his parents. But when that was ruled out, the counsellor felt the teen would probably be safer around others at school.

Ethan later pulled the Sig Sauer from his backpack and began shooting that same day, killing Justin Shilling and Madisyn Baldwin, both 17; Hana St Juliana, 14; and Tate Myre, 16. No one had checked the bag, though a school administrator had joked about its heaviness.

“James Crumbley is not on trial for what his son did,” prosecutor Karen McDonald told the jury. “James Crumbley is on trial for what he did and for what he didn’t do.”

He “doesn’t get a pass because somebody else” pulled the trigger, she said.

Hopkins told the jury that James Crumbley showed empathy towards his son during the meeting about the drawing, but took no further action.

When James Crumbley heard about the shooting, he rushed home from his DoorDash job and looked for the gun.

“I think my son took the gun,” he said in a frantic 911 call.

Investigators found an empty gun case and empty ammunition box on the parents’ bed. A cable that could have locked the gun was still in a package, unopened.

Ethan told a judge when he pleaded guilty to murder and terrorism that the gun was not locked when he stuffed it in his backpack before school.

Lawyer Mariell Lehman tried to emphasise that James Crumbley did not consent to any gun access by his son.

“He did not know he had to protect others from his son,” she told jurors. “He did not know that it was reasonably foreseeable that his son would commit these offences. He had no idea what his son was planning to do.”

There was no testimony from experts about Ethan’s mental health, and no records were introduced. The boy’s lawyers said before the trial that he would invoke his right to remain silent if called to testify.

But the judge allowed the jury to see excerpts from the teen’s handwritten journal.

“I have zero help for my mental problems and it’s causing me to shoot up the ... school,” Ethan wrote. “I want help but my parents don’t listen to me so I can’t get any help.”