Testimony: Jennifer Crumbley blamed Oxford school officials for shooting in texts

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story misidentified Nick Ejak, Oxford High School's former dean of students.

Pontiac — In the days after her son shot 10 classmates and a teacher at Oxford High School, killing four, Jennifer Crumbley sent a message to a friend, accusing school officials of being “nonchalant” and letting the shooter go back to class the morning of the shooting after they met with his parents about violent markings he made on an assignment. 

Then unknown to anyone except the shooter, his backpack that morning held the 9mm handgun his parents had just bought him, but it was never searched.

“His f-----g backpack was with him why didn’t they search it?" Crumbley wrote in a Facebook messenger text to a man she'd be friends with since high school just days after the shooting. "No officer was. Notified and apparently there were threats and (sic) noone not even us notified."   

The message was one of many that emerged Wednesday during a line of questioning by Crumbley’s defense attorney in her trial for involuntary manslaughter charges in Oakland County Circuit Court. Crumbley faces four counts in connection with the Nov. 30, 2021 shooting. Her trial marks the first time a parent has been charged with manslaughter in connection with a mass shooting.

Four students died in the shooting: Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Tate Myre, 16; and Justin Shilling, 17.

Prosecutors accuse Crumbley, 45, of being a grossly negligent parent, ignoring warning signs of her son’s deteriorating mental health but still buying him a gun just a few days before the shooting, despite those red flags.

Crumbley’s defense attorney Shannon Smith has sought to direct attention to others who saw warning signs, implying they also had the power to stop the massacre and did not. 

Crumbley's husband, James, will be tried on the same charges in early March.

Crumbley sent multiple messages to Brian Meloche, with whom she was having an affair at the time of the shooting, dozens of which were read in court. She shared with him details about the meeting she and James had with their son, his school counselor and the school's dean of students on the morning of the shooting.

"They should of never blown it off and made it seem of no concern and gave him the option to go back to class, she said. "It could of been prevented."

Crumbley described the conversation with school officials as "very nonchalant."

"Oh here’s a list of counselors, but we don’t see him as a threat…and we just agreed because he’s NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG!!" Crumbley wrote Meloche.

Crumbley also appeared distraught in the days after the shooting, telling Meloche she wasn't sure she wanted to live, felt like a failure and was sick seeing her son be arraigned.

"We will never be the same," she wrote Meloche. "It's like mourning the death of my child."

No reasonable suspicion

Nick Ejak, Oxford High School's former dean of students who was in the meeting with the Crumbleys, testified earlier this week that he had no reasonable suspicion — a legal standard of proof — to justify searching the shooter’s backpack.

Ejak and the shooter’s counselor, Shawn Hopkins, said in court they believed the drawings on his worksheet indicated possible depression and suicide ideation, not a threat to other people. The dean and counselor testified they urged the shooter’s parents to seek help for him right away, but they couldn’t force Jennifer and James Crumbley to take action when they said they had to go back to work.   

The officials testified Jennifer and James Crumbley never told them the family owned guns, and they insisted they would have changed how they treated the situation if they had known that piece of information. 

Crumbley worried son might ‘do something dumb' 

On the day of her meeting with school officials about her son’s math worksheet, Crumbley messaged Meloche that she worried her son would "do something dumb." 

Meloche said on the stand he knew the Crumbleys had bought their son a gun a few days earlier, and asked where it was before Jennifer Crumbley’s meeting with school officials. Crumbley told him the gun was in her vehicle, and Meloche — a fire captain in Dearborn — told her that was not a good place to keep it, he testified. 

“With my background and everything, I know that was just, if something was going to occur, that (the gun) would produce immediate irreparable damage,” Meloche said. 

Crumbley told Meloche she had the “string lock” — referring to a cable lock that goes through a firearm’s slide and magazine area — on the gun she and her husband had just bought their son, that it was secured, unloaded and the bullets were stored separately. 

But a few days later, it appears she lied to Meloche about what the school employees showed her. When she texted him the photo of her son’s worksheet on Dec. 3, she said the drawings and words had been scratched out by the time she saw it, Meloche testified. 

A dispute of veiled threats 

Meloche, who testified that he often met Crumbley about one morning a week in a Costco parking, appeared to give inconsistent testimony in court Wednesday about whether law enforcement threatened him with exposure of the affair following the shooting.  

Meloche met with law enforcement three times and said he was always truthful with police about his relationship with Crumbley. 

Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Matthews said she'd gotten inconsistent “vibes” from Meloche, noting he said earlier in the afternoon that he felt like he received veiled threats from police. Meloche said an officer got more aggressive during the interview and threatened that his personal information about the affair would be released to the public. 

“The investigator was pushing it and inferring that this would all get out, which it has now,” Meloche said. “He didn’t threaten my job.” 

Rough arrests after a manhunt 

Prosecutors also introduced more details Wednesday about the arrest of the Crumbleys early in the morning on Dec. 4.  

Closing in on the couple after a statewide manhunt, body cam footage played in court showed law enforcement officers bursting through the door of an art studio in Detroit with their rifles drawn and pointed them at the couple, who lay apparently asleep on a mattress.

Officers ordered Jennifer Crumbley to roll onto her stomach. They used expletives several times as they shouted at the couple to show them their hands. James Crumbley yelled in pain as the officers arrested him. 

The couple were in a building near Belle Isle at about 1 a.m. Dec. 4, 2021, said Sgt. David Hendrick, a former detective with the Oakland County Sheriff's Office. The owner of a coffee roasting company who ran his business nearby had recognized the couple’s car parked outside the building from a “wanted” poster. 

“The people who, the parents of the shooter that are running away, they’re here,” Luke Kirtley said in his call to 911, which prosecutors played in court. "I can't believe it, they're here." 

Jennifer Crumbley’s trial resumes Thursday morning. Prosecutors expect to finish presenting their case this week. Crumbley will take the stand in her own defense, her attorney Smith said at the trial’s beginning. 

kberg@detroitnews.com