Involuntary manslaughter trial begins for James Crumbley, father of the Oxford High School shooter

James Crumbley bought a gun for his 15-year-old son in 2021 that his son used days later to open fire at Oxford High School, killing four students and injuring others at the school. Now, Crumbley is sitting in trial this week as the prosecution argues that he bears part of the responsibility for the four deaths, qualifying four counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Crumbley’s wife, Jennifer Crumbley, was found guilty in February of the same charges, the first U.S. conviction that assigned a level of responsibility to the parent of a mass shooter for the deaths caused.

The shooter was sentenced to life without parole in December.

On Thursday, Cheryl Matthews, the Oakland County Circuit judge in the case, signed an order revoking Crumbley’s ability to communicate freely over the phone and electronically after the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office says Crumbley was found to have made threats. The office didn’t specify who the threats were directed at.

“James Crumbley’s access to a telephone and electronic messaging while in the Oakland County Jail has been limited due to threatening statements he made while on the phone and in electronic messages,” the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “His access to a phone or electronic messaging is now limited to communication with his lawyer.”

In the trial, the prosecution bears the burden of proving that the actions of Crumbley, as the shooter’s father, made the shooting possible through neglecting his duties as a parent to prevent his child from harming others or failing to take reasonable action to mitigate that harm. 

During the trial, the prosecution will call attention to details like Crumbley being the one to purchase the gun and how it was stored, Crumbley’s lawyer, Mariell Lehman, said in her opening statements Thursday. However, she cautioned jurors to make note of what the prosecution can’t and won’t say.

“You won’t hear that James Crumbley knew that his son knew where that firearm was. Ladies and gentleman, James probably was not aware that his son had access to that firearm,” Lehman said. “James Crumbley did not know what his son was going to do. He did not know that his son could potentially harm other people. He did not know what he was planning. He did not purchase that gun with the knowledge that his son may use it against other people. You will not hear that he did that.”

In Jennifer Crumbley’s trial, a similar defense was given that no one could have foreseen the shooter would go to school on Nov. 30, 2021, and shoot six of his fellow students and a teacher.

But just as he said at the start of that trial, Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor Marc Keast said on Thursday the deaths of students Madisyn Baldwin, Hana St. Julianna, Justin Shilling and Tate Myre were preventable, but James Crumbley ignored every opportunity he had to intervene.

“You will hear that there was one and only one person who called the police that day to identify their kids as the suspected shooter. It was James Crumbley,” Keast said. “This nightmare, these murders, were preventable by him, foreseeable by him.”

And between 15 and 20 witnesses will be called to reiterate that there were signs that the shooter had been in mental distress and Crumbley had multiple opportunities as a parent to intervene, even on the day of the shooting, Keast said.

On the day of the shooting, both of the shooter’s parents were called to the school because he had drawn a gun on his math assignment with other concerning images and statements including “Blood everywhere.”

Crumbley didn’t tell the school he had bought a gun for his son, the same one he had drawn on the assignment, Keast said. Crumbley didn’t take his son home that day, or check to see where the gun was until after he knew about the shooting.

Crumbley, by chance, had been at the local Meijer, where students were scrambling to be reunited with their families after the shooting, Keast said, but Crumbley didn’t stay. He went home to look for his gun. 

About 20 minutes after receiving the alert that there had been a shooting at his son’s school, Crumbley called 911, asking for police to be sent to his house.

“I’m at my house; there’s an active shooter situation going on at the high school. My son goes to the high school. I have a missing gun at my house, Crumbley said to the operator. “I have a missing gun and my son was at the school and we had to go meet with the counselor this morning because of something that he wrote on a test paper.”

Edward Wagrowski, an Oakland County Sheriff’s detective at the time of the shooting, testified Thursday and Friday on other calls, text messages and video surveillance in the school at the time of the shooting.

He said all of the sudden he was told it was “all hands on deck” and that there was a shooting at the high school. 

As a computer crimes analyst, Wagrowsk said it was out of the ordinary for the “nerds” to be called to an active shooter situation, but he sprung into action and drove until he found the Meijer he knew kids were running to.

Wagrowski remembers looking at the kids and thinking about his own teenage daughter as they arrived.

“One kid didn’t even have a shoe on; he only had one shoe on walking through the snowbank going down to the Meijer and I see these girls dressed like my daughter and it was cold. I had two coats on and I was shaking. I was shivering … it was so cold,” Wagrowski said.

Molly Darnell, a teacher who was shot in the arm, was the first witness called in the trial Thursday. 

Darnell testified that the only reason she wasn’t dead, as the shooter was aiming to kill, was because she turned away once she saw the shooter standing right in front of her door in the school. She said she remembers being in denial about being shot in the arm, thinking she felt hot water on her skin and not blood. Darnell didn’t register that the smell in the air was gunpowder.

It wasn’t until later when she was in the hospital getting an X-ray to see if there was any debris from the bullet in her chest that she cried, Darnell said. The wound was about six inches from her heart and it became clear to her what the shooter’s intentions were.

“He was aiming to kill me,” Darnell said. “My husband was my nurse at home taking care, cleaning my wound. And at some point … I realize that’s at heart level.”

When asked how many videos he had to review to examine exactly what path the shooter took through the school and who he encountered, Wagrowski emotionally recalled “too many.”

“The shooter came out of the bathroom, I’ll never forget it. He came out of that bathroom with … a proud chest, like his shoulders were back,” Wagrowski said.

And that’s when the shooting began, with Oxford High School student Phoebe Arthur being the first person shot right outside the bathroom. Then her boyfriend, Elijah Mueller, was shot.

The shooter next started shooting at Hana St. Juliana, Kylie Ossege and Riley Franz. Wagrowski said that “they fell on top of each other.”

During the shooter’s sentencing, Franz, who was injured, described the pain of what the shooter had done to everyone in the school, saying pieces of her had been “shattered” by that day.

“I, Riley Franz, am a survivor of gun violence. I, Riley Franz, am a survivor of a terrible epidemic caused by a broken system. But I refuse to be known as a victim at the hands of an individual with no regard for others. His selfishness will not consume my identity,” Franz said.

Ossege recalled during the shooter’s sentencing laying on the floor with St. Juliana, stroking her hair, repeating her mom’s phone number and doing math problems in her head ‘to make sure her brain was still functioning’ after she and St. Juliana lay wounded waiting for help. 

Madisyn Baldwin was crouching in the hallway in a fetal position when the shooter put the gun to her head and fired, Wagrowski said.

Baldwin’s friend, Maddie Johnson, who now is an advocate for ending gun violence, has described Baldwin as the most compassionate person she’s met in her life, saying at the shooter’s sentencing that Baldwin would have been the shooter’s friend, treating him with nothing but kindness, had he not killed her.

The shooter proceeded to fire down the hallway, just trying to hit anyone who was running away, Wagrowski said.

“You see a whole bunch of kids; you see a whole bunch of teachers standing at doors just grabbing kids as they ran by and just throwing them into a room,” Wagrowski said. “Then there’s two girls, one you see she runs up to a door and tries to pull it open, but the people inside had already put the safety latch at the bottom of the door, she couldn’t get it open. Meanwhile the shooter’s still walking towards and another girl comes from the right side of the frame and grabs the other one by the arm and just tears off down the hallway. Meanwhile, the shooter is shooting at them.”

Soon after, the shooter found Tate Myre who didn’t know what was going on and shot him multiple times before turning and shooting Darnell through a door, and then firing into another classroom where kids were hiding.

The shooting ended with the shooter entering a bathroom, firing and killing Justin Shilling, while another student, Keegan Gregory, was seen by Wagrowski “running for his life.”

Gregory said at the shooter’s sentencing, “I almost feel guilty about being alive, knowing that Justin’s family is living in grief.”

Both the prosecution and defense mentioned in opening arguments that the jury will have the task of examining the relationship between Crumbley and his son, the shooter.

On Thursday, Wagrowski showed text messages between the shooter and his friend a few months before the shooting where the shooter said he had asked Crumbley to take him to the doctor. According to the shooter, Crumbley said, “Suck it up” and gave him some pills.

Jennifer Crumbley found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in Oxford High School shooting

One of the avenues the jury can take to confirm an involuntary manslaughter charge is finding that through neglect, Crumbley’s actions made the deaths at Oxford High School happen.

Lehman pointed out during cross examination on Friday that there isn’t a lot of context to this exchange and there’s no way to know what kind of pills the shooter was given, or if that is even the case.

“You know, what’s on the page? You don’t know anything beyond what’s on that page?” Lehman asked Wagrowski concerning a Facebook messenger conversation shown between Crumbley and his wife.

Wagrowski confirmed that was true and Lehman extended that reasoning to other text messages and exchanges that will be examined during the trial, calling into question the context under which evidence is being brought.

“The words on the page are the words on the page,” Lehman said in her questioning.