OXFORD, Mich. (CN) — The fifth day of Jennifer Crumbley's manslaughter trial began Wednesday with prosecutors going over the manhunt police launched to arrest her and her husband James Crumbley in late 2021.
The Crumbleys fled their home in Oxford, Michigan, after their son Ethan Crumbley carried out a fatal school shooting on Nov. 30. Prosecutors announced manslaughter charges for the couple on Dec. 3, 2021, making them the first parents of a school shooter to face criminal charges for their child's actions — but the couple did not attend their arraignment held the same day. Police instead found them staying in a building on Detroit's east side early the following morning.
Prosecutors have argued that this, along with the couple withdrawing some $4,000 in cash the same night they were charged, showed the Crumbleys were fleeing the law and attempting to avoid responsibility for the shooting.
But Jennifer Crumbley's defense attorney Shannon Smith has instead argued that the couple fled to avoid violent reprisals in their community, and planned to turn themselves in later on the day police caught them. They subsequently pleaded not guilty to the four manslaughter charges state prosecutors filed against them.
On Wednesday jurors heard from the Detroit coffee business owner who tipped off police to the Crumbleys' location, as well as from Cpl. David Shaw, one of the Detroit SWAT officers who captured them.
Prosecutors also played the officer's body camera footage of the arrest, in which police in riot gear threw open the door of the room where the Crumbleys were staying. In the footage, police can be heard violently ordering James and Jennifer Crumbley, who were lying face-up on a mattress, to turn over.
"On your stomach. Get on your fucking stomach!" an officer tells James Crumbley in the footage, before Shaw grabs his arm and physically flips him over.
A few feet way, another officer can be seen pointing an assault weapon at Jennifer Crumbley as she lays on her side. A third officer then helps Shaw lift a screaming James Crumbley to his feet, with an officer ordering the wanted man to stand up and asking for his name.
In the courtroom, Jennifer Crumbley sobbed as the footage played. Smith, her attorney, put an arm on her shoulder.
Luke Kirtley, the coffee business owner who testified before Shaw, said he called 911 after seeing the Crumbleys' Kia SUV outside the building in which his business is located. He told prosecutor Karen McDonald he recognized the car from a post on Facebook, and that he'd heard news of the couple running.
"The parents of the shooter that are running away, they're here," Kirtley told the 911 operator in a recording prosecutors played for the jury.
Kirtley testified that 20 or 30 law enforcement officers came "locked and loaded" after local police verified the Crumbleys' license plate.
"The officers who were inside of the building had full-on rifles, walking through the space," Kirtley said.
Jennifer Crumbley has maintained throughout trial that the couple planned to turn themselves in the same morning police arrested them, and were staying in a friend's art studio.
While cross-examining another witness on Wednesday, a since-retired member of the Oakland County Sheriff fugitive apprehension team named David Hendrick, Smith pointed out that the couple, before going to Detroit, stayed in a hotel in Auburn Hills, Michigan, only a few minutes by car away from the courthouse.
"We can agree that Auburn Hills is close to the courthouse?" the defense attorney asked Hendrick.
"Correct," he affirmed.
More drama followed in a separate twist on Wednesday afternoon, after a firefighter named Brian Meloche took the stand.
Meloche began his direct testimony to prosecutors by presenting himself as a high school friend of Jennifer Crumbley and answering questions about messages the pair had sent each other before and after the school shooting.
The messages themselves were a source of controversy: Smith argued she'd so far had time to review only eight of the 77 pages of messages prosecutors wanted to admit.
"Your Honor, I'm going to need a moment, this is 77 minus eight more pages than I was told," Smith said.
Matthews agreed to give Smith time to review the messages, sending the jury out to go eat "licorice and donuts" while the attorney did so. But the controversy over Meloche only grew once Smith began her cross-examination and asked the firefighter about three separate interviews with law enforcement officials he sat for in December 2021, February 2022 and December 2023.
The defense attorney implied Meloche had changed his testimony over the course of those interviews, and asked if law enforcement officials had threatened that he could lose his job or pension if he "was helping" Jennifer Crumbley. Meloche said they had.
"It's fair to say that when you've talked to law enforcement, they have said things that make you feel like you're going to be in trouble because of your friendship with Jennifer Crumbley?" Smith asked.
"Correct," Meloche said.
The line of questioning prompted an objection from prosecutor Marc Keast, who said Smith was getting "dangerously close" to broaching a topic she had previously sought to exclude. Matthews again dismissed jurors so the attorneys could discuss the controversy, and when questioning resumed, Smith broached the taboo with Jennifer Crumbley's blessing: she had Meloche confirm on the stand that he had an affair with the defendant.
Matthews previously ruled that information about the affair could be kept out of court.
Drilling down further, Meloche seemed to alter his testimony and clarified that he didn't fear losing his job or pension, but his affair with Jennifer Crumbley being made public. He also said investigators instructed him to tell the truth in his interviews.
"I felt I was guarding myself and my statements, being the investigator was pushing it and inferring that this would all get out, which it has now," Meloche said.
Regardless of the clarification, Keast said the officials who interviewed Meloche should now be allowed to testify. Prosecutors previously said they plan to rest their case against Jennifer Crumbley by the end of the week, but it is unclear how the new development will affect that schedule, if at all.
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