A Michigan school official told jurors Tuesday that he felt he had no reason to search a teenager’s backpack before the boy fatally shot four fellow students, even though staff met with the teen’s parents that morning to discuss a violent drawing that he had scribbled on a blackboard. math assignment.
Nick Ejak, who was in charge of discipline at Oxford High School, said on November 30, 2021 that he was concerned about Ethan Crumbley’s mental health but did not consider him a threat to others.
After the meeting about the drawing, the teen’s parents refused to take their son home. A few hours later, he took a 9mm gun from his backpack and shot eleven people in the school.
Jennifer Crumbley, 45, is charged with involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors say she and her husband were grossly negligent and could have prevented the four deaths if they had taken care of their son’s mental health. They are also accused of making a gun accessible in their home.
Much of Ejak’s testimony focused on the meeting that morning, which included him, the parents, the boy and a counselor. The school requested the meeting after a teacher found the drawing, which depicted a gun and a bullet and read: “The thoughts don’t stop. Help me. The world is dead. My life is useless.”
Ejak said he had no reasonable suspicion to search the teen’s backpack, such as nervous behavior or accusations of vaping or possessing a weapon.
“None of that was there,” he told the jury, adding that the drawing also did not violate the school’s code of conduct.
Ejak said he found it “strange” and “strange” that Jennifer and James Crumbley refused to take their son home immediately.
“My concern was that he gets the help he needs,” Ejak said.
He said the parents did not reveal that James Crumbley had bought a gun as a gift for Ethan just four days earlier. Ejak also didn’t know about the teen’s hallucinations earlier in 2021.
“It would have completely changed the process we followed. … As an expert on their child, I rely heavily on parents for information,” he said.
James Crumbley, 47, will stand trial in March. The couple are the first parents in the US to be charged in connection with a mass school shooting committed by their child. Ethan, now 17, is serving a life sentence.
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