OXFORD, Mich. (CN) — James Crumbley's manslaughter trial may end before the week does, after a packed fourth day of testimony on Tuesday.
The father of Oxford High School shooter Ethan Crumbley — who fatally shot four of his schoolmates in November 2021 — James Crumbley faces four counts of involuntary manslaughter for each teen his son killed: Madisyn Baldwin, Hana St. Juliana, Tate Myre and Justin Shilling. His wife Jennifer Crumbley was convicted on identical charges in February. Together they are the first parents of a school shooter in U.S. history to face criminal charges over their child's actions.
On Tuesday, jurors heard from six witnesses, the most yet in a single day to take the stand for the prosecution, ranging from Oakland County law enforcement officials to a Detroit small business owner. The day's proceedings ended shortly before 4:30 p.m. after prosecutors told presiding Oakland County Judge Cheryl Matthews that they had no one left to call.
The state may formally rest its case against James Crumbley on early Wednesday morning without calling any more witnesses, prosecutor Marc Keast said at the end of the day, but he and fellow prosecutor Karen McDonald first wanted to review the case exhibit list.
"We had a lot of modifications throughout the case," Keast told Matthews. "We want to confirm with defense counsel what was extracted and added on, and then tomorrow morning we'll know for sure."
First up in the morning, Detective Adam Stoyek of the Oakland County Sheriff's Office described his and other officers' search of the Crumbleys' Oxford home on the day of the shooting. Stoyek shared photos his team took of the house while conducting their search, including an image of a notebook the investigators recovered in which the shooter had drawn various doodles of firearms. Another photo showed an empty gun case and empty 9mm ammunition box, which Stoyek said investigators found on the Crumbley parents' bed.
Ethan Crumbley used a semiautomatic handgun, bought for him by his father, to carry out the November 2021 shooting.
The next four witnesses — now-retired Detective Sergeant David Hendrick of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, Detroit coffee company owner Luke Kirtley, Detroit SWAT officer David Metzke and Detroit police forensic technician William Creer — detailed the manhunt that ensued for James and Jennifer Crumbley after they left their home on Dec. 3, 2021, shortly after the state announced criminal charges against them.
Both Crumbley defendants have maintained that they left Oxford that Friday to avoid violent reprisals from angry Oxford community members, and spent the night in a friend's Detroit art gallery with plans to turn themselves on Saturday. But the story prosecutors presented to the jury on Tuesday — like the one they presented in Jennifer Crumbley's trial — was that the couple was scared and on the run, their getaway plans foiled by a small business owner who, outside the building where his company was located, recognized their car from a wanted poster and called the cops on them in the wee hours of the morning.
"I had just not seen that car in person before, so like when I saw it I was like 'Oh, that's a new Kia,' and when I saw it I was like, 'Oh that's like, that, new Kia,'" Kirtley told prosecutor Karen McDonald on the stand.
Not long after Kirtley identified their vehicle, Metzke and other Detroit SWAT officers arrested both Crumbley parents in a raid on the industrial building they were sleeping in. Besides the two parents, Creer told jurors that police had also found several thousand dollars the pair had emptied from their and their son's bank accounts earlier Friday evening, as well as food, medication, cell phones and newly-purchased clothes.
The most dramatic testimony of the day came from the last witness, Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Detective Lieutenant Timothy Willis. Willis was one of the chief investigators into the shooting and also led the office's computer crimes and fugitive apprehension teams.
It was during Willis' testimony that jurors got to see excerpts from the shooter's journal, which explicitly blamed his parents for his poor mental health as well as for his desire to shoot up his high school. James Crumbley fought, unsuccessfully, to bar these excerpts from trial given that his son would not take the stand. Without his son to provide context to the damning excerpts, the father argued, it was unfair for the jury to see them.
"I want help but my parents don't listen to me so I can't get any help," the shooter wrote on page five of his journal.
"I have zero help for my mental problems and it's causing me to shoot up the fucking school," he wrote on page six.
While Willis was on the stand prosecutors also played video footage of the shooting. James Crumbley himself kept his eyes fixed on the defense table, his lead attorney Mariell Lehman placing her hand on his shoulder for support. Willis also read out the names of everyone his son injured and killed in 2021, causing him to burst into tears.
It's not clear yet how long the defense team plans to take for its own case once the prosecution rests. Much of Lehman's strategy so far has been to emphasize what the prosecution's witnesses don't know, rather than present contradictory evidence against their testimony. In Jennifer Crumbley's trial, the defense called only a single witness — Jennifer Crumbley herself.
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