Given what has been reported about the events leading up to the shooting at Oxford High School, the community and the nation needed a fuller accounting of how school officials responded in the hours before Ethan Crumbley turned his school into a bloodbath. Well, that accounting began dribbling out late Saturday—and enough details came out to merit a separate diary.
In a letter to the Oxford community, Oxford Community Schools superintendent Tim Throne shed some light on the events of Nov. 30, just before the shooting. It turns out that I wasn’t being too harsh when I referred to James and Jennifer Crumbley as Ethan’s “parents” rather than just his parents. When they were told—not asked—to get Ethan into counseling, they seemed more concerned about getting back to work on time than doing their most basic duty as parents.
Read the letter here. Throne revealed that on the morning of Nov. 30, one of Ethan’s teachers saw the now-infamous note depicting a semi-automatic handgun, a bullet, and the words “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me”; “Blood everywhere”; “My life is useless”; and “The world is dead.” The teacher immediately alerted guidance counselors, as well as dean of students Nick Ejak.
Ethan was immediately pulled from class and taken to a guidance counselor’s office. When questioned about the note, Ethan said he had ambitions about becoming a video game designing; the drawings were part of a design for a game. As we now know, by then Ethan had scratched out several portions of the note.
Counselors called Ethan’s “parents,” but it took awhile to raise them. In that time, they continued to observe and question Ethan. According to Throne, Ethan “appeared calm,” and counselors had no reason to believe he posed a danger to himself and/or others.
When the “parents” finally arrived, counselors asked Ethan “specific probing questions regarding the potential for self-harm and harm to others.” Ethan’s answers apparently convinced the counselors that he posed no threat. However, apparently they were concerned enough about the note to recommend counseling. This makes sense; apparently they were concerned that the manner in which he expressed himself wasn’t the most healthy.
How the parents responded to that recommendation has to be reproduced in full to be believed.
Counseling was recommended for him, and his parents were notified that they had 48 hours to seek counseling for their child or the school would contact Child Protective Services. When the parents were asked to take their son home for the day, they flatly refused and left without their son, apparently to return to work.
Given the fact that the child had no prior disciplinary infractions, the decision was made he would be returned to the classroom rather than sent home to an empty house.
I had to read this twice to believe it. These two “parents” had just been told—not asked—to get help for their son, and get it within 48 hours. Any parent with an iota of love for their son would have dropped everything and made sure Ethan got home safely. But they couldn’t be bothered to do so.
Based on Throne’s telling, the counselors apparently felt that they were in a tight spot. Ethan’s parents weren’t willing to take him home for the rest of the day. And yet, if I’m reading this right, they didn’t want to risk having it on their consciences in case Ethan committed suicide while at home alone. But it seems hard for me to believe that there was nothing the counselors could do other than send him back to class. Indeed, according to Throne, the counselors didn’t alert the principal or the assistant principal.
Apparently Throne and the school board have already been taking a lot of heat, because he says that in the face of “anger (and) confusion” as well as “understandable questioning,” the counselors “professional training and clinical experience” led them to make a decision based on the facts they had on the table at the time. Frankly, though, it seems hard to believe that there was nothing the counselors could do on their own when it was apparent that Ethan’s “parents” weren’t taking this seriously.
That being said, though, this letter makes Ethan’s “parents” look even worse than they already did. I have to wonder if school officials shared this information with prosecutors and law enforcement. After all, it would certainly bolster prosecutors’ case that these “parents’” nonfeasance justified charges of involuntary manslaughter. If I were their lawyers, I’d be in plea bargain talks right now. Consider what we already know. They didn’t see fit to search his backpack or ask him if he had the gun they’d bought him as an early Christmas present with him. But they couldn’t be bothered to drop everything and spend the rest of the day with Ethan, or at least make sure he had a safe place to go. That’s not going to allow them to look good in front of a jury.
Throne has asked for a third-party investigation into the incident. However, we don’t need an investigation to know that James and Jennifer Crumbley are the definition of unfit parents. The Crumbleys face up to 15 years in prison per count. Based on this report, anything less than a total of 20 years would be a joke. Based on this telling of events, these “parents” did not make the decision they should have made—the decision they had just been told to make, the decision they were legally and morally required to make. And because of that failure, four people are dead.