Prosecutor: Mother of Michigan high school shooter bears responsibility for son’s rampage

Smith argued this fact was a misunderstanding of the Crumbleys fleeing their home for a "friend's art studio" to avoid violent reprisal from the community as they waited to turn themselves in. But Keast insisted it was another example of how Jennifer Crumbley sought to evade responsibility for her son.

As the attorneys offered jurors their competing narratives, Jennifer Crumbley sat slumped in a gray shawl at the defense table. She will testify later in the trial, Smith said, to tell jurors "about her life with her son" and "about the day he did something she could have never anticipated or fathomed or predicted."

Following opening statements jurors spent the day hearing testimony from four witnesses: Molly Darnell, a teacher at Oxford High School who survived being shot by Ethan; Kristy Gibson-Marshall, the school's assistant principal; Cammy Back, the gun store clerk who sold James Crumbley the Sig Sauer handgun Ethan used in the shooting; and Brett Brandon, a special agent from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms.   

Darnell offered the most dramatic testimony of the day, tearfully recalling the shock she experienced at realizing she had been shot. She said she saw Ethan approach through the glass window of her office door after witnessing a "commotion" of students running past in the hallway, and hearing the school principal announce a lockdown over the intercom. She did not initially recognize him as a student, she said, because he was wearing a mask, hood and glasses. 

"I locked eyes and then instantly I noticed... some movement. So I looked down and I realized he was raising a gun to me," Darnell said.

Darnell next described feeling a burning sensation in her upper left arm as she jumped away from the door, seeing a bullet hole in the office window behind here, and realizing blood was dripping down her arm. At prosecutor Karen McDonald's prompting, Darnell also showed jurors the entry and exit wounds the bullet inflicted. 

"He didn't hesitate," she said.  

Neither Darnell nor Gibson-Marshall, who described her own experience of the shooting, faced cross-examination from defense attorneys. The rest of the day was less dramatic, with the lawyers sparring over the testimony offered by Back and Brandon. 

Though Back recalled selling James Crumbley a 9mm handgun on Nov. 26, 2021, with Ethan in tow, Smith pointed out that Jennifer Crumbley's name appeared nowhere on the purchase receipt. Brandon spent much of the afternoon explaining his investigation into the Crumbley family's firearms, how they acquired them and how proficient Ethan was with them. Prosecutors also used his testimony, as well as the Crumbleys' social media posts, to establish that Jennifer Crumbley was aware her son went to shooting ranges even before she took him to one to test out the 9mm.  

The defense, in turn, tried to find the limits of Brandon's knowledge of the Crumbleys' home situation. At one point Smith pushed the agent to acknowledge it was possible Ethan was exaggerating when he sent his friend a message in August 2021 stating he had played with a gun his father had left out in the house. The message was accompanied by video of a hand loading a pistol. 

“My dad left it out so I thought, ‘Why not,’ lol,'" the message read.

Proceedings concluded for the day around 5 p.m., but jurors will likely sit through several more weeks of evidence and testimony before receiving the case.

The parents had hoped to avoid trial altogether. Throughout 2022 and 2023, they asked multiple levels of state court to throw out the charges against them, culminating in a three-judge state appellate panel ruling last March that there was enough evidence to justify a trial.

Seven months later, the state Supreme Court issued a single-page order refusing to hear their appeal of that decision.

To explain their reasoning, the high court justices wrote, "we are not persuaded that the question presented should be reviewed by this court."

The pair did manage to secure individual trials for themselves rather than facing the jury together. James Crumbley's trial is scheduled to begin in March. Both face up to 60 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

Similar to the Crumbleys, an Illinois man named Robert Crimo Jr. faced criminal charges in late 2022 for helping his underage son buy an assault rifle and other weapons despite the boy's history of violent incidents. His son, Robert Crimo III, is suspected of using that legally obtained assault rifle to carry out a mass shooting in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park during the town's 2022 Independence Day parade.

Unlike the Crumbleys, Crimo Jr. pleaded guilty last November to all seven criminal reckless conduct charges he faced — one for each of the seven people killed in the Highland Park shooting. He began serving his 60-day prison sentence a week after entering his guilty plea.

Crimo III faces trial on 117 felony counts, including first-degree murder, attempted murder and aggravated battery. He has pleaded not guilty to all of them.

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