The parents of the teenager who killed four students at a northern US school were arrested on Saturday after being charged with manslaughter for letting their son use a gift gun.
James and Jennifer Crumbley had been actively wanted since Friday by the police and the FBI. The police finally located them in an industrial building in Detroit, about sixty kilometers from the scene of the shooting, not far from where their car had been spotted earlier.
The couple’s lawyers assured Friday that, contrary to what was reported, Ethan Crumbley’s parents were not on the run.
“The Crumbleys left the night of this tragic shooting for their own safety,” they said in a message to AFP on Friday evening.
“They are returning to the region to be presented to a judge. They are not running away from the authorities despite what the media report, ”they said.
However, the fact that they left $ 4,000 and turned off their phones suggested they were on the run, police officials noted on CNN.
They are each charged with four manslaughter for letting their son use a gun they bought, county prosecutor Karen McDonald said.
“These charges are a message so that people understand that the moment they have a gun, they are responsible,” she added, denouncing an “inadequate” Michigan law that does not require keep a weapon locked up.
Ethan Crumbley, 15, killed four students in cold blood and injured six others as well as a teacher on Tuesday at the high school grounds in Oxford, a small town north of Detroit.
He “walked into the college and pulled the trigger” but “other people contributed to this event and I intend to hold them to account,” said Karen McDonald, announcing the lawsuits against the parents.
Ethan Crumbley has been charged with “terrorist act” and “assassinations”, and faces life imprisonment because he is being prosecuted as an adult. He pleads not guilty but has chosen to remain silent. He is being held in solitary confinement in the county jail in Pontiac.
Shootings remain a recurring scourge in the United States, where the right to own guns is constitutionally guaranteed. But lawsuits against relatives of their perpetrators are extremely rare.
– Christmas gift –
James Crumbley had bought the previous Friday, the day of the big “Black Friday” promotions, a Sig Sauer semi-automatic pistol as an early Christmas present for his son.
After the purchase, the teenager posted images of the weapon on social media, calling it “beauty.”
Police said he had recorded a video the day before the shooting on his cell phone announcing his intention to use his gun at school, without posting it on the internet.
The next morning, Ethan Crumbley had been summoned with his parents by the administration of the establishment, for drawings of a weapon and a bloody body accompanied by a smiling emoticon, as well as messages evoking death: “Help -me, my life is useless, the world is dead, blood everywhere, ”said the prosecutor.
“To think that a parent could read these words knowing that their son had access to a lethal weapon he gave them is incomprehensible, and I think it is a crime,” she said.
She also criticizes the parents for not having at that time asked their son where his gun was, which was in his backpack.
Two hours after the meeting, he had come out of the bathroom, gun in hand, methodically progressing through the halls of the establishment, shooting at students and at the doors of the classrooms where they had barricaded themselves. He fired at least 30 bullets.
According to the police, he had aimed at random, without choosing previously identified victims.
On the news of a high school shooting, Jennifer Crumbley had sent a message to her son, writing “Ethan, do not do it”. His father then reported to the police the disappearance of the pistol from the drawer where it was stored.
The tragedy has created an atmosphere of psychosis in Michigan, where authorities are “inundated” with messages of threats against schools.