How parents are being held responsible after school shootings
In a Nutshell
Prosecutors are increasingly holding parents criminally accountable for school shootings by their children, as in the landmark Oxford, Michigan case where Ethan Crumbley's parents were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 10+ years for ignoring red flags and failing to secure the gun that killed four students. Schools often evade responsibility due to immunity laws despite protocol failures, while research from the Violence Project reveals over 90% of school shooters broadcast plans beforehand, stemming from childhood trauma and isolation—preventable through mental health support, threat assessments, and community intervention rather than security theater. Federal funding cuts exacerbate the crisis, underscoring the urgent need for national standards and action beyond thoughts and prayers.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, there have been 84 mass shootings at schools across the United States. Each tragedy is uniquely horrific. The response from lawmakers has become frustratingly predictable: condolences, partisan rhetoric, and ultimately inaction. Prosecutors are pursuing cases by holding the shooter's parents responsible, not just putting the gunman behind bars.
For the past two weeks, the father of an accused high school mass shooter has been on trial in Barrow County, Georgia. Prosecutors argue he ignored red flags about his son before the teen shot up Apalachee High in 2024, a tragedy that left four dead. This is not the first time a parent has been put on trial. The precedent-setting case is out of Oxford, Michigan.
Four years ago, on a cold November day, a gunman opened fire at Oxford High School about 40 miles north of Detroit. A 15-year-old student walked the halls armed with a 9mm handgun, killing four schoolmates:
- 16-year-old Tate Myre, a star athlete and student mentor.
- 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana, just three months into her freshman year.
"Hana was a bright light. Making people laugh is what most people remember about her. Her smile and her laugh."
"Tate had a crazy awesome zest for life. He was an incredible soul. It's hit the community hard."
Buck Myre and Steve St. Juliana are among families whose children have been killed in school shootings.
"How are we doing as a country moving towards this not happening again?"
"We're not moving in that direction. Yeah, we're going backwards at the moment. Changes that have been made at legislative level trying to add more mental health support, more gun control, it's all being reversed. We don't seem to be wanting to learn from them. We need to get in prevention."
There were red flags for months. Prosecutors say the gunman, Ethan Crumbley, had texted his mother on multiple occasions that he saw demons in the family home. Three months before the shooting, he assured a friend he was just kidding after texting "it's time to shoot up the school." 24 hours before the attack, his troubling conduct escalated:
- A teacher emailed administrators that she saw the sophomore looking at different bullets online in class.
- A school administrator left a voicemail for the boy's mother. She didn't respond, but later texted her son, "Lol, I'm not mad. You have to learn not to get caught."
The next morning, hours before the shooting:
- Another teacher alerted administrators that the teen's math worksheet had drawings of a gun, a bullet, and a person bleeding along with the words, "The thoughts won't stop. Help me. Blood everywhere."
- He was taken to a guidance counselor's office and his parents were called in.
- The counselor testified that he recommended therapy and suggested the Crumbleys take their son home, but they refused, citing work.
- The meeting lasted just 12 minutes. They left and he went back to class. His backpack was never checked.
2 hours later, surveillance video shows the 15-year-old walked into the bathroom, pulled a gun out of that backpack, entered the hallway, and started shooting. Police found his journal on the bathroom floor detailing his desire and plan to shoot up his classmates. Investigators learned that just 3 days before the attack, his mother had taken him to a shooting range with that 9mm handgun, which his father had purchased for him as an early Christmas present.
"Do you think his parents failed him?"
"Yes, I think there was plenty of red flags there for them to be aware that he was in crisis. And their answer to that was to go buy him a gun and take him shooting, which there's nothing wrong with that activity in and of itself, but when that's your answer to a child in crisis, that's a problem."
"I'll never forgive him, right? But this kid was asking for help at every level and he didn't get it and he did something horrible."
"Is it your own choice to plead guilty?"
"Yes, sir."
Ethan Crumbley pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors argued he wasn't the only one to blame. His parents were each convicted of four counts of involuntary manslaughter for failing to secure the gun and ignoring the warning signs of their son's mental health crisis. They were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison. It is the first time that parents anywhere in the country have been held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by their child.
"Our society refuses to take significant action to protect our children. So, one of the only places that we can put this back on to are the parents."
"What's really unfortunate here is when you want to think about this shooting and accountability, only the shooter and the parents have been held accountable. There's been no accountability at the school."
"Should the school bear some responsibility?"
"Absolutely. They're in the business of kids. The kid was in a counseling office. He was obviously in crisis. He basically already had a gun in his hand, and the counseling office fumbled it."
Victim's lawsuits against school officials and the district have been dismissed, citing Michigan's government immunity laws, which protect public entities and their employees from being sued.
"Immunity is driving inaction. Law enforcement says, 'Well, we don't want to waste our time doing the investigation cuz they've got immunity.' Prosecutors are the same way. They don't want to prosecute or try to prosecute because, well, they're coming up against immunity. So, why bother? We've fought consistently just to have this investigation done."
"I imagine that there will be people who say the schools are already stretched thin. They don't have the ability to do much with a kid who's in trouble."
"We can't let them off the hook. This was preventable."
There are no national standards after a school shooting. No federal mandates for state reviews or investigations. Typically, the FBI is only required to investigate if it's considered an act of terror or a hate crime.
After months of pressure from the community, the Oxford school board hired a private security firm called Guidepost to conduct an independent investigation. Guidepost doesn't have the legal authority to compel testimony. Of the 161 people they asked to interview, approximately 70 refused or would not respond, including two school employees who met with the shooter hours before the incident. The district said many staff members had given depositions in court proceedings, but according to Guidepost, those interviews didn't fully address all of their questions.
Guidepost concluded that teachers at Oxford High acted appropriately by immediately raising concerns. Guidepost investigators faulted the school for not following established threat assessment protocols, writing this tragedy was avoidable. The Michigan Attorney General's office says it is now investigating.
James Densley and Jillian Peterson are professors of criminology and founders of the Violence Prevention Project, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based nonprofit that studies mass shootings.
"You think about all the things that were learned after 9/11 and how that created an entire infrastructure and an apparatus around dealing with terrorism. We don't see that same type of urgency with the mass shooting problem. Instead, we get sort of thoughts and prayers. We get a situation where we pit off imperfect solutions against each other because no one can agree on anything. And then that creates a situation where there's no action. So what is missing is that definitive action where we can create a template that everybody else then follows suit."
Densley and Peterson have spent the last 10 years researching hundreds of mass shootings, interviewing those who knew the gunmen and also the shooters themselves, hoping to better understand their pathways to violence and how to stop them.
"What's the pattern that emerged from the data? We saw an early childhood with a lot of pretty significant violence or neglect, domestic violence in the home. It kind of laid the foundation."
"Did you ever say to any of these mass shooters, could somebody have stopped you?"
"That was one of the questions I asked every time. Is there anyone or anything that could have stopped you? And every person we talked to said yes. One of them even said, 'I think anyone could have stopped me.'"
Their research shows that over 90% of all school mass shooters broadcast their plans online or in person before they commit the atrocity. Investigators say the gunman in Parkland, Florida; Uvalde, Texas; and Apalachee High in Winder, Georgia, all told people about their intent before the attacks.
"They're feeling hopeless and they feel isolated and they're looking for that notoriety. They want to be seen no matter how dysfunctionally. No matter how dysfunctionally, it's better than not being seen."
Often after a school shooting, schools add more metal detectors, clear backpacks, and drills. If a school is given emergency resources to make kids safer:
"It's not the best use of them. All of that security ends up being kind of theatrical. It makes you feel better maybe, but if a student is the perpetrator, it doesn't do anything. You're better off spending resources on things like teams that communicate with each other, school-based mental health, crisis intervention, suicide prevention. The data over and over again bears that out. The best thing we can do to prevent violence is not to push kids out. It's to actually pull them in."
The researchers are part of a pilot program in Minnesota designed to teach school staff how to identify kids in crisis and wrap them with services.
In 2022, after Uvalde, Congress passed a bipartisan bill that included $1 billion in grants for mental health services at schools. But last April, the majority of that funding was discontinued. The Department of Education explained the programs conflicted with the administration's priorities. In December, it awarded $28 million for credentialed school mental health providers, a fraction of the original funding.
"Something has to change. Gun violence is the number one killer of our children in America, and our society currently seems to have its head in the ground, refusing to acknowledge this. Just saying, 'Oh, it's the way it is.' No, that's a ridiculous answer. This is not something that is insurmountable. We can make great strides to prevent this from happening again. We just aren't."
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