Recap Day 3: Mother of Oxford High School shooter will take the stand during trial

Pontiac — The mother of the Oxford High School shooter, now on trial for involuntary manslaughter for her role in the 2021 shooting that left four students dead, will take the stand in her own defense, her attorney said during her opening statement Thursday.

Shannon Smith, Jennifer Crumbley's attorney, said Crumbley will take the stand in Oakland County Circuit Court in the first of its kind trial against a parent connected to a mass shooting and share how the shoother had "not been her son" and was manipulating her in the months before the shooting.

After opening statements, Thursday's proceedings have included testimony from an Oxford teacher shot on Nov. 30, 2021; an assistant principal who saw the shooter; a woman who sold guns to James Crumbley, Jennifer's husband; and an Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spent agent. Read more below:

No law against youths at gun ranges

During her cross examination of U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Special Agent Brett Brandon, Smith asked if it was illegal under federal or state law for a parent to take a minor to a gun range to shoot a gun. He said it isn't. She also asked if at the time of the shooting in 2021, any state or federal laws required guns to be safely stored.

Brandon said there are "no federal laws that force anyone to store their firearms in any way."

Smith continued to question if the gun used in the shooting, which Jennifer and the shooter had taken to a shooting range to use, was brought home; who or if a cable lock was put on the gun afterward; if it was ever brought into the house; or how it was stored.

Smith also asked Brandon how comfortable Crumbley appeared with guns.

"There's no doubt the shooter has a lot more knowledge about this gun than" Crumbley does, said Smith. Brandon agreed.

Gun range videos

Multiple videos shown in court show the shooter firing the family's guns at local gun ranges. Some of the videos were shared between Jennifer and James, other were posted on social media.

One surveillance video, taken 24 hours after the shooter got the Sig Sauer he later used in the shooting, show the teen and his mom at a shooting range together, where he sets up the target for his mother and shows her how to load the magazine and shoot the gun. 

Afterwards, Crumbley posted on Instagram: “Mom & son day testing out his new Xmas present. My first time shooting a 9mm I hit the bullseye.” She included photos of the Sig Sauer gun her husband had bought the day before.

Shooting experience

Brandon, the ATF agent, said while watching surveillance video of the shooting at the school, he noticed that while the shooter only used one arm for most of his first shots, he switched to two hands and got into a shooter’s stance and used the gun sights when he saw Tate Myre. Brandon said he knew he had experience with a gun.

“He came to a dead stop and took aim,” Brandon said. “He walked two or three steps forward and took aim again.”

Brandon said 32 fired shell casings were found at the school.

Special agent testimony, guns not registered

Earlier in his testimony, Brandon said he found out that a Rochester man had originally purchased the 9mm handgun that was used in the Oxford shooting, but had sold it back to an Oxford gun store, where it was bought by James Crumbley.

Prosecutors presented the murder weapon in court, and McDonald noted how heavy it was as she handed it to Brandon. McDonald also showed the jury the two other guns, a Cobra Classic Derringer and 22-caliber KelTec, that were found in the Crumbley home. 

At one point, Smith objected to McDonald asking Brandon about the weapons the Crumbleys owned and if the weapon used in the shooting, a Sig Sauer, was more deadly.

"It’s absolutely relevant," McDonald said.

None of the three guns the Crumbleys had were registered, Brandon said.

Brandon said the cable lock that was found in the Crumbley home in one of the gun cases “looks almost new,” like it had not been used many times.

He also said the gun safe where two of the guns — the two not used in the shooting — were found in the Crumbley home had the combination of 000, which is often the factory default. 

Brandon said he does not know if the cable lock was on the gun and if it was locked up.

Gun purchases

Cammy Back, an office manager at a retail store that sells guns, testified that James Crumbley, Jennifer's husband, and their son, the shooter, came in to buy a gun in June and November 2021. Jennifer Crumbley was not with them, Back said. 

It would be illegal to sell a gun to a 15-year-old, Back said, but parents have the right to take their children hunting or to shooting ranges. 

"When a parent buys a gun, a parent has a right to (take a child to) a shooting range, correct? A parent has a right to (take a child to) go hunting?" Smith asked.

"Correct," Back said. 

Emotions run high

After Assistant Principal Kristy Gibson-Marshall's emotional testimony, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald addressed the court, saying that Matthews had instructed both lawyers and witnesses to keep their emotions in check and accused Smith, Crumbley's attorney, of "sobbing." Smith denied sobbing.

Matthews said she did not instruct anyone not to show emotion, but asked that people leave the courtroom if they are being disruptive. 

"This is a very emotional situation for everyone here," said Matthews. "If someone was audibly sobbing in the audience, I would hope that they exit."

Smith, meanwhile, said she was not sobbing, but used a tissue to fix her eye makeup after surveillance video ended.

“This is horrific,” Smith said, noting she had not seen the video before because it wasn’t relevant to her client. “That’s why we asked the court not to play it. … We were not sobbing or making a scene.”

Assistant principal testifies

Gibson-Marshall, an assistant principal at Oxford High School for six years, spoke about hearing shots on Nov. 30, 2021 and instead of running away, moving towards them. She went to check the hallways to make sure everyone was OK.

She found a student lying on the ground and saw another student walking in her direction. She nudged the student — Tate Myre — with her foot and told him to stay there. That’s when she realized who the shooter was.

“It was when I realized it was Ethan that I didn’t think he could possibly be the shooter,” Gibson-Marshall said. “It seemed so odd it was him, so I said ‘Buddy, are you OK, what’s going on?’”

When Gibson-Marshall identified Crumbley’s son as the shooter, Jennifer Crumbley began crying, moving aside her glasses to wipe her eyes with a tissue. Smith put a hand on her back.

Several of the jurors wiped away tears during Gibson-Marshall’s testimony and people in the gallery were sniffling. Crumbley began crying harder and sniffling when prosecutors showed surveillance video of Gibson-Marshall walking through the halls and encountering her son. 

Gibson-Marshall, who got emotional as she watched surveillance video from the hallway she was in the day of the shooting, was not allowed to testify about some of the more gory details she shared during Ethan Crumbley's Miller hearing last year. She gave Myre mouth-to-mouth in an attempt to save him and testified last year how she can still taste his blood in her mouth sometimes. 

Victim testifies

Molly Darnell, who was a teacher at Oxford High School and one of the seven shot by the shooter, was the first witness to take the stand.

Darnell said she heard a commotion in the hallway, then three loud pops, the sound of slamming doors and the principal’s voice over the public announcement system announcing a lockdown.

Darnell told the jury about how during passing time in the afternoon of Nov. 30, 2021, she locked eyes with the shooter through her office window.

“I looked down, and I realized he’s raising a gun to me,” Darnell said. “He didn’t hesitate.”

She felt a burn below her left shoulder, like hot water had been thrown over her. She turned and saw a bullet hole leading outside into the courtyard.

Darnell used her cardigan to tie a tourniquet around her arm once she realized she was bleeding. She described barricading herself behind a filing cabinet, thinking the shooter would come back and "finish what he wanted to do."

As she was bleeding, her daughter, who attended another school and heard there was a shooting at Oxford, texted her and asked if she was OK. Darnell told her she was sheltering in place, loved her and was OK.

"Everything that I knew to be reality, wasn't," Darnell testified.

Darnell was in the classroom for about 20 minutes before police and an administrator found her and took her out of the school. 

When asked why she believes she wasn't killed, Darnell, who moved slightly before she was shot, said: "The distance, that door and that move is the only reason I’m alive."

Defense's opening statement

During a lengthy statement, Smith described Crumbley as a caring parent and asked jurors to "reserve judgment."

"The prosecution has grossly misconstrued facts in this case, and I ask that you wait to make judgment until all the facts are presented," said Smith.

Smith also said Jennifer actually knew very little about the family's guns and it has her husband, James, who was responsible for storing the family's guns securely.

"Jennifer Crumbley didn’t know anything about guns. She went to the shooting range one time with James and the shooter," said Smith.

Smith started her opening statement with a Taylor Swift lyric about Band-Aids not being able to stop "bullet holes."

“That’s what this case is about,” Smith said. “It’s about the prosecution attempting to put a Band-Aid on problems that can’t be fixed with a Band-Aid.” 

"The prosecution has charged Jennifer Crumbley with involuntary manslaughter in an effort to make the community feel better, in an effort to make people feel like someone is being held responsible," Smith said. "In this case, a Band-Aid will never bring back the lives that were lost."

Smith told the jury that the shooting was "absolutely not foreseeable. This was absolutely not expected."

Crumbley cried when Smith talked about the kind of mother she was, pressing her hand to her face.

Prosecutors' opening statement

Oakland County prosecutors painted a picture of Jennifer Crumbley as a mom who had several opportunities to intervene before her son fatally shot four classmates in November 2021 but didn't, saying she didn't pull the trigger but "she is responsible for those deaths."

During his opening statement Thursday in Oakland Circuit Court, Assistant Prosecutor Marc Keast said by the time Jennifer's son, Ethan, pulled the trigger on Nov. 30, 2021, he'd been in a "downward spiral" that had begun months earlier and his mom knew about it.

And during a meeting with school officials just hours before the shooting, Jennifer Crumbley was "given the opportunity to prevent these murders from ever happening. Instead, she chose to do nothing," said Keast.

In a message to her husband on Facebook after school officials alerted her of a drawing their son had done and asked for a meeting, she said she was “very concerned” and was heading to their son’s school.

But Crumbley “abruptly ended” the meeting with counselors Nov. 30, 2021, after just 11 minutes, Keast said. They didn’t take the shooter home, ask him about the gun, check his backpack for the gun, or stop home to check that the gun was still where they had left it, Keast said. 

“The two people in the world with all of the information, all of the background, to put this drawing into context were James and Jennifer Crumbley,” Keast said. “In that meeting, they didn’t share any of it.”

"We’re not here to talk about good parenting or bad parenting," Keast said. "It’s not illegal to be a bad parent."

Keast said prosecutors will put 20 to 25 witnesses on the stand and present 400 exhibits.

Jury instructions

Oakland Circuit Court Cheryl Matthews urged jurors not to discuss the case as opening statements got underway Thursday for the mother of the Oxford High School shooter who is being tried on involuntary manslaughter charges.

Matthews went over a detailed list of instructions, telling the jury not to discuss the case with anyone and to avoid media coverage of the case. She said if someone brings up the case, stop the conversation. She also said jurors can't research any aspect of the trial and post anything on social media about it.

"It’s your duty as a jury to determine this case based solely on the evidence," said Matthews.

She also reminded the jury that it's important for them to keep "an open mind" and not make any decisions until they go to the jury room to deliberate.

"You must reach your own conclusions in this case," she said.

Family in courtroom

On Thursday morning, roughly a dozen non-media people were in the courtroom, including parents of two of the students who were killed in the November 2021 shooting: Craig Shilling, whose son, Justin, was one of the victims and Steve St. Juliana, whose daughter, Hana St. Juliana, also was killed.

Jury finalized

Jennifer Crumbley, 45, is being tried on four counts of involuntary manslaughter for the deaths of four students at Oxford High School in November 2021 who were fatally shot by her son, Ethan.

The mostly White jury was finalized Wednesday after two days of questioning.

To convict Crumbley, prosecutors will need to prove Jennifer Crumbley was grossly negligent as a parent by giving her son access to a gun and ignoring his mental state. She faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

On Thursday morning, roughly a dozen non-media people were in the courtroom, including parents of two of the students who were killed in the November 2021 shooting: Craig Shilling, whose son, Justin, was one of the victims and Steve St. Juliana, whose daughter, Hana St. Juliana, also was killed.

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kberg@detroitnews.com