Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the Oxford high school shooter, is set to face a judge in April and learn her punishment after a jury deemed her guilty of 4 counts of involuntary manslaughter.
While Crumbley is the first parent in the nation to be held criminally responsible for her child’s involvement in a school shooting, she is not the first to face charges in connection to an improperly secured firearm.
In the city of Detroit last year, eight minors were involved in accidental shootings. Police say five of those children were injured in the self-inflicted shootings while three of them were killed.
At least one of those fatal cases resulted in the charging of the child’s parents. In December, the Wayne County prosecutor announced involuntary manslaughter charges against the parents of a 5-year-old who accidentally shot and killed himself at an apartment on Greenfield Rd, between Grove St. and Puritan Ave.
“When you look at how young the child was, only 5 years old, that really puts on a heightened responsibility or duty on the parents to take care of that gun,” said former federal prosecutor Mark Chutkow.