Two parents charged with their son in a Michigan school shooting failed to get their $500,000 bond reduced on Friday as prosecutors presented new allegations about the teenager’s hallucinations, his passion for guns and his boasts about violence.
James and Jennifer Crumbley, who are charged with manslaughter in the Oxford high school shooting, ignored many warning signs about Ethan Crumbley and instead bought him a gun which was used to kill and injure four students others on Nov. 30, Assistant District Attorney Marc Keast said. said a judge.
In August, Ethan made a video with a different weapon and told a friend in a message that it was “time to shoot the school – jk, jk, jk,” Keast said, apparently a reference to ” I’m joking”.
The 15-year-old was fascinated by Nazi propaganda, even keeping a Nazi coin prominently displayed in his bedroom and drawing Nazi symbols in a notebook that was also used to make family grocery lists, Keast said.
Earlier in 2021, Ethan told his mother via text that he thought “there was a demon or a ghost or someone else inside the house,” the prosecutor said. “These weren’t one-time messages. He would repeatedly send what he perceived to his mother, who sometimes wouldn’t respond for hours.”
Keast said the parents did not intervene. He also said Ethan started seeing mental health ads online after regularly searching for information about school shootings and guns.
“They didn’t schedule therapy,” Keast said. “Has not investigated what might be in his room, on his phone or on his (internet) browsers.”
The parents are accused of making a gun accessible to Ethan and of failing to take responsibility by refusing to remove him from school two hours before the shooting when counselors confronted them with his harrowing drawings of violence.
“Are we done here?” Keast quoted Jennifer Crumbley as having told school officials.
Ethan Crumbley is charged as an adult with murder and other crimes.
The former Crumbleys occasionally shook their heads in disagreement as Keast spoke during a hearing held on Zoom. Judge Julie Nicholson refused to lower their bail to $100,000 and seemed primarily swayed by arguments that the couple might flee Michigan if released from prison.
The couple had more than $6,000 in cash and numerous phones and credit cards when they were arrested miles away at a Detroit art studio on December 4, hours after the charges were announced against them, said Oakland County District Attorney Karen McDonald.
Their lawyers insist the Crumbleys did not know a school shooting was in progress and did not make the gun easy to find at home.
Defense attorney Mariell Lehman said Ethan’s diary, which was seized by police, says “he needs to find where his dad hid the gun.”
“This statement in Ethan Crumbley’s own words is contrary to the false and misleading assertions that have been made by the prosecution,” Lehman said in court Friday.
Earlier, in a separate court appearance, the teenager and his lawyers waived a key evidentiary hearing and transferred his case directly to a trial court. Ethan is being held in jail without bail.
Defense attorney Paulette Loftin later told WWJ-AM that a plea deal was a “definite possibility,” although “it’s too early to move into that phase.”
Students at Oxford High are expected to return to school next week for the first time since the shooting, but in a different building.
The high school, located about 50 kilometers north of Detroit, could reopen during the week of January 23.
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