PONTIAC, Mich. — Jurors were left Friday with two depictions of Jennifer Crumbley at the end of closing arguments in her trial: on one hand, an aloof mother who had multiple chances to prevent her son’s deadly school rampage, and on the other, a hypervigilant but imperfect parent who could not have foreseen such violence.
Whether Crumbley’s decisions around the time her son, Ethan, opened fire at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021, make her partially responsible for his actions will play into the jury’s finding of guilt or innocence of involuntary manslaughter.
Deliberations are expected to begin Monday in the unprecedented trial — a rare attempt to hold the parent of a school shooter accountable.
“I am Jennifer Crumbley,” her lawyer, Shannon Smith, told jurors during her closing argument, implying that any parent who is working and raising teenagers may inadvertently find themselves in the defendant’s position.
“This case is a very dangerous one for parents out there,” she added.
During her closing argument, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald reviewed testimonies from the almost two dozen witnesses called, from school staff to Crumbley’s co-workers, seeking to lay out how Crumbley did not appear invested in her teenage son and then was overcome with a “consciousness of guilt.”
“I showed you everything. I called witnesses to the stand to say things I know you probably didn’t like,” McDonald said, referring to harrowing testimony and video shown to jurors of the shooting, “but my job is to give you all the facts. But my job is also to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jennifer Crumbley is guilty, and I believe we did that.”
She listed several examples of what Crumbley could have done to stave off the shooting when she and her husband, James, went to Oxford High School earlier that day to meet with school counselors concerned about a drawing that Ethan made of a gun and a person who was shot.
She said Crumbley could have warned the counselors that her…
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