Oxford teacher stood between school gunman and victim during 2021 attack
Pontiac — Assistant Principal Kristy Gibson-Marshall heard gunshots inside Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021, but instead of running away, she walked toward them.
Within minutes, Gibson-Marshall had eyes on the gunman walking inside the sprawling but nearly empty Michigan high school, after most of the 1,600 students had fled moments earlier in terror.
As the shooter walked toward her, Gibson-Marshall looked hard at his face, never taking her eyes off him. Within seconds, she knew those eyes belonged to 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, a student she had taught years ago in elementary school.
"I just thought, 'It couldn't be Ethan. He wouldn't do that,'" Gibson-Marshall said Friday during Ethan's Miller hearing in Oakland Circuit Court, with the suspect just feet away from her in shackles and flanked by police. "And so I talked to him. I said, 'Are you OK?' and 'What's going on?'"
She walked with the teen for a few seconds down the empty hallway, trying to talk to him, reluctantly leaving the side of an injured student lying face-down on the ground.
The teen, wearing a mask, looked away from her and didn't respond, walking past her quietly and calmly, Gibson-Marshall said. He never raised his weapon at her.
Gibson-Marshall said she knew something was really wrong, but she didn't want to get too far away from the injured student, so she returned to his side, rolling him over to render aid.
That's when she recognized Tate Myre, a young man she had known since the age of 3. She taught his older brothers in school.
She took his pulse and checked his vitals before trying to get his backpack off so she could give him lifesaving breaths, but Tate was already blue. Tate did not respond to her, but Gibson-Marshall said she kept giving him rescue breaths anyway. She could feel the entrance wound from the bullet in the back of his head.
"I just kept talking to him, saying that I love him. That I needed him to hang with me," she said. "He was blue, but when I was giving him breaths, he was getting lighter, so I thought they were helping. So I kept giving him breaths."
Gibson-Marshall sobbed during her testimony about her attempts to save Tate. As she told her story, Tate's parents Sheri and Buck Myre sobbed as they heard about her efforts to save their son's life.
"It was crushing," Gibson-Marshall said through tears. "I had to help him. I just needed to save him. For his mom."
Gibson-Marshall's testimony also drew an emotional response from the shooter for the first time in the two-day Miller hearing on whether the now 17-year-old should be sentenced to life without parole.
As Gibson-Marshall spoke, the teen, shackled and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, deeply bowed his head and pursed his lips as tears began dripping down his face.
Gibson-Marshall is the only prosecution witness who called Ethan by his first name instead of saying "the defendant" or "the shooter." She was the last witness called by the prosecution Friday as it rested its case.
Her account followed vivid and emotional testimony from students who witnessed the attack, including Heidi Allen, who rendered possibly lifesaving aid to a wounded classmate, and Keegan Gregory, who was in the bathroom with Justin Shilling when he was shot and killed. Defense attorney Paulette Loftin had no questions for the assistant principal and the two students.
His defense team used Friday's hearing to present evidence that the teen struggled with depression and paranoid thoughts and heard voices in his head but did not receive the help he said he needed from his parents. His legal team is scheduled to resume its presentation in court on Tuesday.
Loftin is arguing that the shooter's age, unsupportive family and home environment, the circumstances of the crime and the possibility of rehabilitation make a life in prison without parole a disproportionate sentence.
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