In the Oxford school shooting: historic punishment, familiar sadness

The shootings happen so frequently that the only way to distinguish one from the other is with a heartbreaking shorthand that’s both callous and intimate. The rampages have become known by their geography, first by the cities and suburbs where they occurred — Aurora, Las Vegas, Buffalo, Parkland. And then by the way in which the quotidian — a movie, a live concert, a grocery store, a school — became killing fields. But the shooting at a high school in Oxford, Mich., in which four students died carried the specific tensions and sorrows that have us yelling at each other across self-imposed divides about school safety, gun ownership and the authority of parents.

What is the appropriate power dynamic between parents and teachers? Can a 1950s version of gun culture realistically exist in this 21st-century society? Can communities barricade and surveil schools to safety? Oxford overflowed with the lies the culture tells itself.

Do you recall the Oxford shooting in November 2021? It’s written on the soul of those who lived through it, but for others it may have been overtaken by the urgencies of a presidential election, the rising death toll in Gaza or some singularly personal calamity that requires full attention. But more likely, Oxford sadly, horrifically, simply faded away.

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So many of the details of the tragedy were familiar: a young man got hold of a gun and left a path of devastation and terror in the hallways and classrooms of an American school. The shooter, Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time of the killings, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Then, in an Oakland County courtroom, his parents were tried for their part in the mayhem.

Jennifer and James Crumbley had separate trials for involuntary manslaughter. First, the mother. Then, the father. The juries found them both guilty, the first time parents were convicted of deaths in a mass shooting committed by their child. On Tuesday, a judge sentenced each of them to 10 to 15 years in prison. She noted that the convictions were “not about poor parenting. These convictions confirm repeated acts — or lack of acts — that could have halted an oncoming runaway train, repeatedly ignoring things that would make a reasonable person feel the hair on the back of her neck stand up.”

Their punishment was a far cry from what their attorneys requested. James’s attorney argued that he be sentenced to time served — and the clock has been ticking since the couple was arrested in December 2021 when police officers found the husband and wife camped out in a warehouse on the east side of Detroit, some 40 miles south of Oxford. Jennifer’s attorney suggested that her client be sentenced to house arrest — in her attorney’s guesthouse.

The Crumbleys’ was an unusual prosecution. The closest comparison might be the recent case of Deja Taylor. In Virginia in 2023, Taylor’s 6-year-old son gained access to her gun and shot his first grade teacher. Taylor was punished as a result of his actions, but her crimes were child neglect, possessing a firearm while being a drug user and lying on a background check. In contrast, the Crumbleys have been found complicit in the Oxford killings. They enabled them. They not only failed their child and their family; they failed society. They helped to clear a path that led to the killings and their countless ripples of trauma.

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It was quite something to see the mother face a jury. She didn’t look like the same person who had been arrested. She moved like a woman carrying not just additional physical weight, but also the outrage and despair of a community. There were moments when a courtroom observer might have been tempted to decry her prosecution as another way in which mothers still are expected to bear the bulk of the responsibility for parenting. The prosecution depicted her as a woman more consumed with her work and her horses and her extramarital affairs than her child. But then she took the witness stand and said, “I’ve asked myself if I would have done anything differently, and I wouldn’t have.” She demonstrated an inability to see her own failings upon closer inspection. And her failing was that she saw the son that she wanted to see, that it was easier to see, rather than the deeply troubled one who stood before her asking for help.

James was the parent who purchased the gun that was his son’s tool for devastation. He bought it and tucked it away in an armoire and slipped the bullets under a pair of jeans and that was his safety plan at a time when 327 people a day are shot in the United States. It was his right to bear arms in a part of the country that loves hunting and target-shooting, but not to do so carelessly. James never took the stand, but his jailhouse phone calls were filled with anger and threats toward the prosecutors. When he finally addressed the victims’ family members during Tuesday’s sentencing, he said, “I’m sorry for your loss as a result of what my son did.”

During the trial, an educator testified to locking eyes with the killer as he pointed a gun at her. She managed to dodge the bullet that was aimed at her heart but instead hit her shoulder. A police officer grew emotional as he explained how he’d watched hours and hours of video that tracked the killer as he moved through the school and the bodies fell. Through their testimony, listeners learned that this school had more than 100 cameras positioned throughout it. Classroom doors had special bolts that extended into the floor so that entrances could not be breached. It was a fortified school, a place where seemingly every corner was under surveillance, but it was not immune to the killings. The hardened school was no match for a single desperate student with a gun.

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The killer had described his mental distress. He shared this information with a friend and in his journal and with his parents. The teachers deferred to the parents despite concerns that their son needed immediate counseling — not because teachers foresaw the deaths of his schoolmates but because they feared for his own safety. And what did the parents do with all their authority? These are the days in which parental rights demand that children be excused from learning about sex or gender issues or racism. Parents demand to be told about their child’s every mishap and desire shared with a teacher or counselor but don’t want to hear that their child is struggling.

“He was not the son I knew when I woke up on Nov. 30,” Jennifer said to the victims’ families during sentencing. “I know we did our best.”

Then as she sat at the defense table in her prison stripes, she added: “This could be any parent up here in my shoes.”

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Indeed, it could be any parent who ignores signs that their child is struggling emotionally, purchases them a gun, fails to secure the gun and insists that they could not possibly foresee a tragedy.

Parents imagine the possibility that all sorts of things could befall their child. They envision stranger danger on the playground. They worry about government overreach into their relationship with their child. They fret about their child being uncomfortable in school or socially ostracized or being diagnosed with a deadly ailment. And they’re terrified of lockdowns and shootings and having to meet in a family unification zone to be told that their worst fear has come true.

Before the judge announced the Crumbleys’ sentence, the victims’ family members talked about their loss. Their stories were filled with unfathomable sadness. Indeed, the truest thing that Jennifer’s attorney might have said was that there was more than “enough sadness to go around.” Holding the Crumbleys accountable will do nothing to dissipate the sadness of today, but perhaps it will help to limit the sorrows of the future.

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