PONTIAC, Mich. — Clashing portraits emerged of Jennifer Crumbley during opening statements Thursday in her trial on involuntary manslaughter charges, as prosecutors said the Michigan mother wilfully failed to act before her teenage son’s deadly school rampage in 2021, while her defense argued she simply did not know what he was capable of.
In their statements, both sides focused on the events leading up to the mass shooting at Oxford High School days after Thanksgiving, when school administrators alerted Jennifer Crumbley and her husband, James, of a drawing their son, Ethan, had made of a gun and a bleeding person that a teacher found on his desk.
But Oakland County prosecutor Marc Keast told the jury that while Jennifer Crumbley shared her “private concern” with her husband in Facebook messages, she neglected to say her son had access to a gun when they met with school staff just hours before the shooting spree. Such a meeting with parents could last an hour, but Keast said Crumbley ended theirs after 11 minutes and the parents declined to take their son home.
“Even though she didn’t pull the trigger on Nov. 30, she’s responsible for those deaths,” said Keast, who began his opening statement reciting the names of the four slain students.
The Crumbleys “didn’t do a number of tragically small and easy things that would have prevented this from happening,” Keast added.
Later, Crumbley’s lawyer, Shannon Smith, offered a glimpse into the defense’s strategy when she told the jury that while the mother had taken her son to a gun range, her way of spending time with him as he struggled with the family dog’s death and a friend who had moved away, she wasn’t responsible for locking and storing the firearm.
James Crumbley had that authority, and “Mrs. Crumbley had nothing to do with that part,” Smith said.
“The evidence is going to show you that Jennifer Crumbley did the best she could as a mother to a child who grew up into a teenager,” Smith added, “and had no way to…
Read the full article here