Three days after the shooting that killed four people on Tuesday at a high school in Michigan (northern United States), the parents of the teenager who opened fire were arrested on Saturday December 4, after being charged with homicides unwitting for letting their son use a gun given as a gift.
James and Jennifer Crumbley had been actively sought since Friday by the police and the FBI. The police eventually located them in an industrial building in Detroit, about sixty kilometers from the scene of the shooting, not far from where their car had been spotted a little earlier.
The couple’s lawyers assured Friday that, contrary to what was reported, Ethan Crumbley’s parents were not on the run. “The Crumbleys left the night of this tragic shooting for their own safety”they said. “They are coming back to the area to be brought before a judge. They are not running from the authorities despite what the media reports”they said.
However, the fact that they withdrew $4,000 on the way out and turned off their phones suggested they were on the run, police officials told CNN.
A gun they had bought
They are each charged with four manslaughter charges for letting their son use a gun they bought, county attorney Karen McDonald said. “These charges are a message for people to understand that from the moment they have a weapon they are responsible for it”she added, denouncing a law “inadequate” of Michigan which does not require you to keep a gun locked up.
Ethan Crumbley, 15, killed four students in cold blood and injured six others as well as a teacher on Tuesday at the high school in Oxford, a small town north of Detroit.
The “went into high school and pulled the trigger”most “Other people have contributed to this event and I intend to hold them to account”said Karen McDonald in announcing the lawsuits against the parents.
Ethan Crumbley was arrested at the scene and later charged with “terrorist act” and “assassinations”, and risks life imprisonment, because he is being prosecuted as an adult. He pleaded not guilty and chose to remain silent. He is being held in solitary confinement in the Oakland County Jail in Pontiac.
Shootings remain a scourge in the United States, a country where the right to own weapons is guaranteed by the Constitution. But prosecutions against the relatives of their perpetrators are extremely rare. “I expect parents and everyone to show humanity and act to stop a potential tragedy”further explained Mr.me McDonald.
Parents summoned to school two hours before shooting
The father of the teenager had notably bought a few days earlier the semi-automatic pistol used by his son. After the purchase, the teenager practiced his marksmanship and posted images of the gun on social media, clearly stating that it belonged to him. On the day of the shooting, the student had been summoned with his parents by the school administration, after having written a message evoking suicide and death: “Help me, my life is useless, the world is dead, blood everywhere. »
“To think that a parent could read these words knowing that his son had access to a deadly weapon he had given him is incomprehensible, and I think it is a crime”, said the prosecutor. She also criticizes the parents for not having asked their son if he had his gun on him that day, or where it was, when the gun was in his backpack and he had been authorized to go back to class.
Two hours after this meeting, he had opened fire when leaving the toilets, progressing methodically in the corridors of the school and shooting in particular on the doors of the classes where the students had barricaded themselves. He fired at least thirty bullets. At the announcement of a shooting at the school, the teenager’s mother had sent him this message: ” Do not do that. »
The local prosecutor had mentioned earlier this week a “mountain of evidence online, on video or on social media” showing that it was not “of an impulsive act”, but with an act “totally premeditated”.
The police also recovered from the accused’s mobile phone a video recorded Monday, in which he announced his intention to shoot students the next day, a plan he had also recorded in a diary found in his backpack.
Since the tragedy, authorities in Michigan have been ” flooded “ threatening messages against schools in this state, creating a climate of psychosis among the population. More than sixty schools have been closed across the state due to “threatening behavior”according to Oakland County Police, who said most of those threats were bogus.