Michigan Shooting Suspect’s Parents Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter
The New York Times
“Help me,” the teenager accused of killing four of his classmates had scrawled in class hours before the shooting. His parents refused to bring him home and didn’t ask whether he had the handgun they had bought for him days before, a prosecutor said.
Prosecutors in Michigan took a rare step on Friday by filing involuntary manslaughter charges against the parents of the 15-year-old accused of fatally shooting four students in the halls of Oxford High School, saying that they had bought the semiautomatic handgun that he used to carry out the deadly rampage as a Christmas gift.
Karen D. McDonald, the prosecutor in Oakland County, detailed a litany of missed opportunities to prevent the shooting as she spoke at a news conference announcing four manslaughter charges each against the gunman’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley.
On the morning of the Nov. 30 shooting, the suspect’s parents were urgently called into the high school after one of his teachers found an alarming note he had drawn, scrawled with images of a gun, a person who had been shot, and the words, “Blood everywhere,” and, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”
