Asking the question here - let's say the situation were different. The parents owned a car. They had been warned that the car brakes were unsafe and could fail without warning. They continued to drive the car and refused to fix the brakes. The brakes failed, the car hit a group of school kids walking on the sidewalk, and killed several of them.

Would we let the parents off in this case? Why is it different if they failed to heed warnings about their child?

No difference - criminally negligent in both cases.

Big Al

Lisa, I read the two articles you posted. What I get out of them is that this family is being held to community values and standards that *they* do not share. There's a baseline assumption that parents should exercise a certain standard of care, and these people never got that memo.

I find the school is just as culpable. They had a building full of young people in imminent danger, had every reason to believe they were in imminent danger (or they wouldn't have called in the parents) and yet they let the kid return to class. Under the circumstances I believe they had a responsibility to ask if the child had access to a gun, and to search his backpack. The Crumbleys either didn't believe in parenting the way all of us would parent, or they were in denial, or both. I can certainly understand them not wanting to believe what was in front of their own eyes--it's their kid, it's their parenting. The school doesn't get that pass.

I also think that since this kid was obviously, desperately asking for help, clearly was experiencing psychosis, and apparently didn't want to do what he did, he should not be in prison, nor should he have been tried as an adult.

Plus, what is with trying him as an adult and then prosecuting the parents? If he acted as an adult, how can the parents be legally responsible?

All of you are parents, and so you see this case through that lens--YOU wouldn't have acted as they did. You find their actions, values, and choices abhorrent.

I live in Trump country. I have neighbors who I could imagine conducting themselves quite similarly--buying the gun, not wanting to believe what is in front of their face, thinking of themselves as in opposition to school authorities and community standards, passive parents, uneducated about mental illness. Terrified that they'll be lynched by an angry mob so they disappear.

Then you have the obvious narcissism of leaving the kid to fend for himself, taking his money as their own, and spending more time and money on the horses than you do on your own family. I have a neighbor down the road who has a good job, company provided health insurance, and four young kids who he doesn't have on his insurance policy. I found out because the eldest daughter (17) was working for me, had an accident, and told me that she "had to wait" to see a doctor because she wasn't insured. I'm the one who provided her with the critical medical equipment she needed (crutches, shower chair, ice machine, and wedge to support her leg) so that she wasn't consigned to being immobilized in bed for weeks. It deeply infuriated me. Her parents are right wing Christian evangelists planning to ship her off to bible college next year. She is getting zero education in her "home schooling." (Okay I am still incensed.)

My point being--lots of people live their lives this way. Their values, expectations, and standards are different from ours. In this case, those values/expectations/standards resulted in a tragedy. But if they had been more like us, it still might not have prevented what happened.

I find the righteous indignation/outrage because these people didn't do what we would have done in the same situation off-putting.

There are lots of people like that. This case judges their values and choices as flawed. But they could have done everything "right" and still their kid could have committed the same acts. Other people's children still would have died. It was the case in lots of other high schools, unfortunately.

So it is community standards v. this family's dysfunctional system plus their beliefs and values. We don't know that if they had done things differently the outcome would have been different. But we judge them for being different from us anyway.

The school could have acted on what it knew. The legislature could have passed responsible gun laws. That's how you protect your kids from other people's values.

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:
I find the school is just as culpable.

The school did not provide the child with access to a gun. Yes they made a huge misstep in not searching his backpack, but the school is not responsible for fact that there was a gun there in the first place. So I wouldn’t call that “just as culpable.”

quote:

I also think that since this kid was obviously, desperately asking for help, clearly was experiencing psychosis, and apparently didn't want to do what he did, he should not be in prison, nor should he have been tried as an adult.

This part is particularly heartbreaking to me. I haven’t read about the justification for trying him as an adult, but it doesn’t seem appropriate to me.

Anyway, I’m fine with the parents being charged, it makes sense to me bc they are the source of the gun.

yes, they provided their kid with a gun. but lots and lots of parents provide their kids with guns. it's ubiquitous where i live. and i can't recall any school shootings in montana.

there's not something inherently wrong with a 15 year old having a gun, in lots of parts of the country. It's not against the law in Michigan, nor is it required that the gun be locked up.

my point is that this a clash of cultures/values.

sure, i personally don't think people need to own handguns. but i also don't think i get to dictate to other people what their values and beliefs should be. nor how they should raise their children.

the prosecution in this case was motivated by vengeance. it didn't and can't bring those children back or make their families whole.

what was reasonable for Ethan's parents to do in this case is a matter of community standards, i.e. opinion/values, not some kind of immutable principle.

Looking at it from the perspective of the Michigan law. .. Did the parents break the Michigan involuntary manslaughter law or not?

The actual law is very short.

https://www.legislature.mi.gov...jectName=mcl-750-322

FindLaw discussion of Michigan's law:

https://www.findlaw.com/state/...anslaughter-law.html

Discussion of involuntary mansalughter/criminally negligent manslaughter. This bit stood out for me:

quote:

Jennifer’s criminal trial in Michigan court began in late January 2024. The prosecution had to prove one of two theories beyond a reasonable doubt:

1. That Jennifer “caused death” due to her grossly negligent actions, or

2. That Jennifer breached her duty as a parent to “exercise reasonable care to control their minor child so as to prevent the minor child from intentionally harming others or prevent the minor child from conducting themselves in a way that creates an unreasonable risk of bodily harm to others.”

https://www.findlaw.com/crimin...ughter-overview.html

I think the parents broke the law.

I think the school bears responsibility, too. I have no idea if they broke any laws, and whether they can be held criminally and/or civilly liable.

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:
What I get out of them is that this family is being held to community values and standards that *they* do not share. There's a baseline assumption that parents should exercise a certain standard of care, and these people never got that memo.

People who lock their kids in the attic and don't send them to school never got that memo. People who don't get their kid's cancer treated because they don't believe in science never got that memo. People who beat and starve their kids to death never got that memo. But we have court systems and child protective services who are supposed to step in and make sure those parents execise their duty of care towards their children (or have their children taken away if they refuse to). IMO this is similar. Ethan Crumbley was desperately in need of help. From the articles it seems like he asked his parents for therapy numerous times and they blew him off. Whether that is because they were awful narcissists who were too wrapped up in their own lives to pay attention to their kid (as I believe) or just people with a "different cultural view of parenthood" as you seem to believe -- either way, I believe in the eyes of the law they were not fulfilling their duty of care towards that child and the fact that they were found guilty seems to imply that the jury felt the same way.

quote:

I find the school is just as culpable. They had a building full of young people in imminent danger, had every reason to believe they were in imminent danger (or they wouldn't have called in the parents) and yet they let the kid return to class. Under the circumstances I believe they had a responsibility to ask if the child had access to a gun, and to search his backpack. The Crumbleys either didn't believe in parenting the way all of us would parent, or they were in denial, or both. I can certainly understand them not wanting to believe what was in front of their own eyes--it's their kid, it's their parenting. The school doesn't get that pass.

The school tried to send Ethan home with his parents -- they refused to take him. Having worked in the school system for years, I know that what the school is legally allowed to do in a situation like this is very limited. Their option at that point was to send him back to class or send him home to an empty house where they had reason to believe he might hurt himself. Yes in hindsight searching his backpack or lockers would have been good or perhaps keeping him in the counselor office for the rest of the day, but that is a whole legal rabbit hole that opens them up to lawsuits. The parents believed that Ethan was not a threat and refused to deal with him, so the school was placed between a rock and a hard place. I can see how the school could have done better (and hopefully policy changes will be made because of this) but I cannot blame them for this. Schools have 2000 kids to worry about - the Crumbleys had one.

quote:

I also think that since this kid was obviously, desperately asking for help, clearly was experiencing psychosis, and apparently didn't want to do what he did, he should not be in prison, nor should he have been tried as an adult.

This I agree 100% with you on. This child was desperate for help. He asked over and over both verbally and with his actions/drawings/etc. Heck, he kept a tortured bird carcass in his room for weeks hoping his mom would find it. Unfortunately, his outcome is what happens when your parents refuse to pay for a lawyer and you get stuck with the overworked public defender as a clueless teenage kid. The system railroaded this kid because his parents (once again!) refused to step in and provide him with some basic level of care (in this case, a decent legal defense).

quote:

I live in Trump country. I have neighbors who I could imagine conducting themselves quite similarly--buying the gun, not wanting to believe what is in front of their face, thinking of themselves as in opposition to school authorities and community standards, passive parents, uneducated about mental illness. Terrified that they'll be lynched by an angry mob so they disappear.

Then you have the obvious narcissism of leaving the kid to fend for himself, taking his money as their own, and spending more time and money on the horses than you do on your own family. I have a neighbor down the road who has a good job, company provided health insurance, and four young kids who he doesn't have on his insurance policy. I found out because the eldest daughter (17) was working for me, had an accident, and told me that she "had to wait" to see a doctor because she wasn't insured. I'm the one who provided her with the critical medical equipment she needed (crutches, shower chair, ice machine, and wedge to support her leg) so that she wasn't consigned to being immobilized in bed for weeks. It deeply infuriated me. Her parents are right wing Christian evangelists planning to ship her off to bible college next year. She is getting zero education in her "home schooling." (Okay I am still incensed.)

My point being--lots of people live their lives this way. Their values, expectations, and standards are different from ours. In this case, those values/expectations/standards resulted in a tragedy. But if they had been more like us, it still might not have prevented what happened.

I find the righteous indignation/outrage because these people didn't do what we would have done in the same situation off-putting.

There are lots of people like that. This case judges their values and choices as flawed. But they could have done everything "right" and still their kid could have committed the same acts. Other people's children still would have died. It was the case in lots of other high schools, unfortunately.

So it is community standards v. this family's dysfunctional system plus their beliefs and values. We don't know that if they had done things differently the outcome would have been different. But we judge them for being different from us anyway.

You do not have a monopoly on neighbors like this - I live on the line between the Philly suburbs and "Pennsyltucky". I remember taking LL#1 to a playgroup at a mom's house when we first moved here (she was about 3). The mom was proudly talking about how she and her husband had taken their 3 year old to the shooting range and were teaching him to shoot. He was THREE. He couldn't yet be trusted not to throw blocks at the heads of his fellow playmates and his parents were teaching him to shoot a gun.

I know that of all of my neighbors, we are the only house that doesn't own guns. I know that lots of people get their kids into guns and teach them to shoot etc. It was SOP for me to need to ask how and where a family's guns were stored before allowing my kids to play at someone's house. And yes, I made judgements - the parents who assured me that the guns were safely stored in a locked safe and showed me the single key on their keyring that they kept in their pocket were ok to watch my kid. The ones who said "oh I am locked and loaded all the time - my 38 is right there in my nightstand. Nobody better break in here hahahaha" were not.

But I'm not following your logic here. On the one hand, you seem to say that the Crumbleys have a different value system, one shared by lots of your neighbors, where therapy is for pansies and real kids shoot things and that this different belief system explains why they did what they did and excuses them from culpability. On the other hand you are outraged about your neighbor who refuses to educate or medically treat his child to the point where you had to provide for her medical needs. So which is it -- is it ok to neglect your kids because you believe in a "different value system"? Or should you have called CPS on your neighbor because legally he is not fulfilling his duty of care toward his children.

I definitely admit that even if the Crumbleys had done everything that I would have done things might have turned out the same way. Having been through the struggle of a mentally ill child, I count my blessings every day that things didn't go horribly wrong because so much was out of all of our control back then. It was a lot of luck that things turned out ok for us and not so much for the Crumbleys and especially for Ethan's victims. But I will say that us not having any access to firearms in our house made a tragic outcome a lot less likely for us....so in this case, the "different values system" did contribute in some way to the crime.

One of the articles I found when I was looking for articles to post for you contrasted the behavior of the Crumbleys with that of Sue Klebold, the mother of one of the Columbine shooters. The difference was so clear. They lived in Colorado and their kids grew up around guns, but her attitude, her remorsefulness, her introspective "what should I have done differently" is all just the complete opposite of Jennifer Crumbley. It's like the same people in the same value system having the same tragedy happen to them but one of them accepts the ethical and moral responsibility while the other cuts and runs, looking out only for herself. I cannot accept that Jennifer Crumbley's behavior is ok simply because she lives in a "different value system" where it's ok to not believe in mental illness and teach your kid to shoot. As you said, there are plenty of people live in that value system who don't end up in jail because their kid shot up their high school.

quote:

The legislature could have passed responsible gun laws. That's how you protect your kids from other people's values.

This I also agree with 100%. The real fault is the ease with which guns are bought ahd sold and handled in this country. There should be stricter background checks as well as mandatory gun training/licensing and mandatory liabilty insurance (so that owning a gun is much like driving a car). With mandatory insurance, the free market could take care of a lot of the risk management: people could be offered insurance discounts for proving they have safety features like fingerprint locks and secure gun safes. People with higher risk (like teenagers in the house or toddlers in the house or people who want to conceal carry in ther purse) would be charged higher premiums (just like car insurance). It is proven that teenagers have poor impulse control and higher rates of mental illness -- there's a reason they have to be 16 to drive, 18 to vote, and 21 to drink -- so it should not be legal to buy a gun and give it to a teenager. Unfortunately, I have given up hope that anything will be done about gun laws in this country. I'm happy to point fingers at the legislature for all the good that will do.

But I still don't think that living in "trump country" and growing up in gun culture excuses the Crumbleys. To use Nina's example, there's a lot of people who believe the governent shouldn't have the right to tell them what kind of car they can drive or enforce emissions and inspection standards -- should those people be allowed to kill people with their bad brakes because they don't believe in car inspections? The Crumbleys refusal to care for their child enabled this tragedy and they belong in jail for it.

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
Looking at it from the perspective of the Michigan law. .. Did the parents break the Michigan involuntary manslaughter law or not?

The actual law is very short.

https://www.legislature.mi.gov...jectName=mcl-750-322

FindLaw discussion of Michigan's law:

https://www.findlaw.com/state/...anslaughter-law.html

Discussion of involuntary mansalughter/criminally negligent manslaughter. This bit stood out for me:

quote:

Jennifer’s criminal trial in Michigan court began in late January 2024. The prosecution had to prove one of two theories beyond a reasonable doubt:

1. That Jennifer “caused death” due to her grossly negligent actions, or

2. That Jennifer breached her duty as a parent to “exercise reasonable care to control their minor child so as to prevent the minor child from intentionally harming others or prevent the minor child from conducting themselves in a way that creates an unreasonable risk of bodily harm to others.”

https://www.findlaw.com/crimin...ughter-overview.html

I think the parents broke the law.

I think the school bears responsibility, too. I have no idea if they broke any laws, and whether they can be held criminally and/or civilly liable.

Makes sense to me.

So well thought out and expressed, and so powerful because of how close you've been to a child who was challenged with mental health issues.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, Lisa.

quote:

But I still don't think that living in "trump country" and growing up in gun culture excuses the Crumbleys.

Lisa, thank you for carefully reading what I posted so that we are not talking past each other.

I deliberately didn't make my position on the Crumbleys clear.

I think there are two things going on here:

the first is, did the Crumbleys break the law?

According to community standards of what is due care and what is negligence, they did.

The second is that I find in the arguments for their conviction a lot of value judgements that are not really to the point. They parent differently than you and differently than I would (that was the point of my sharing my experience with my neighbors' daughter). They have a right to their values, their beliefs, their parenting style.

Until it results in harm to others.

I was trying to point out that their values/beliefs/parenting style more often than not does not result in harm to others.

I don't know that we have any evidence that CPS should have been involved here.

So let's not blame values that millions of others share (and you and I don't share) without harm to others being the result.

What I object to is the broad-brush judgement of an entire class of people because of the stupidity that was coupled with their values--in this one case.

In other words, the conviction was just in this particular case, because of the neglect and actions of these particular people. That conviction does not merit a broad-swathe condemnation of "gun culture" or Trumpers or etc etc etc as people we need to fear and loathe.

I am objecting to an "us/them" mindset which I feel is so unhelpful/misinformed/and does our society no favors.

This is not directed specifically at anyone here. It's just my impression of the tenor of the news articles and the comments people made on those news articles.

quote:

I don't know that we have any evidence that CPS should have been involved here.

Don't we though? The child was crying out for care, for being connected with a mental health provider, and was being ignored. Isn't that neglect?

Are your neighbors guilty of neglect for the injured child who you actually provide care for?

Isn't dealing with issues like these -- iow child neglect -- what CPS is for? What am I missing?

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

quote:

I don't know that we have any evidence that CPS should have been involved here.

Don't we though? The child was crying out for care, for being connected with a mental health provider, and was being ignored. Isn't that neglect?

Are your neighbors guilty of neglect for the injured child who you actually provide care for?

Isn't dealing with issues like these -- iow child neglect -- what CPS is for? What am I missing?

As a former CASA volunteer, someone who was trained to spot the need for calling CPS and was under obligation to do so when I saw abuse/neglect, IMO yes, the school should have reported the parents if they refused to take the kid in for therapy. However it was already a little late for that.

As for my neighbors, I don't know that CPS would view not providing health insurance as cause for their involvement. My neighbors are extremely hands-on parents, and having seen this one fault within the larger scope of their family life (which we are privy to) I would say no, no cause for calling CPS. The kids are overall in a good situation and seem happy. I don't agree with some of the family's choices, but that is not a good enough reason to call CPS, which is a good way to completely devastate a childhood.

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
Asking the question here - let's say the situation were different. The parents owned a car. They had been warned that the car brakes were unsafe and could fail without warning. They continued to drive the car and refused to fix the brakes. The brakes failed, the car hit a group of school kids walking on the sidewalk, and killed several of them.

Would we let the parents off in this case? Why is it different if they failed to heed warnings about their child?

No, we wouldn't. But I think it might be partly due to the fact that we're all agreed that cars are dangerous and therefor are highly regulated. But there's a whole laisse faire attitude towards guns in this country. Our highest politicians are constantly saying that not enough people have them, that it's too hard to get them already, that we need to loosen restrictions.

Just yesterday a CO state rep accidently left his loaded 9mm Glock in a Capitol building restroom. It was found by a janitor or something. Why the f'n hell was it even loaded!?

This is a problem. Cars are dangerous. Guns are toys.

this discussion kind of reminds me of conversations i've had with horse people about what proper horse care looks like.

different people have different standards of care, usually based on what they consider "normal." mostly their normal is not my normal and i consider their normal to be abuse.

however, nobody anointed me the higher authority on what is proper horse care, and i keep my mouth shut, even when i believe horses are suffering because of their owners' ignorance, abuse, or neglect. there are always extreme cases in which a call to animal control is necessary, but you'd better be damned sure you have your facts straight before having someone hauled into court for animal abuse.

likewise, none of us gets to tell other parents how to raise their children. and the consequences of calling CPS can be so utterly devastating to families, you'd better be damned sure the harm those children are suffering at home is worse than the harm caused by removing them.

i've worked with kids on suicide watch after they were removed from their parents. people are quick to judge, without understanding the situation fully or appreciating that their version of good parenting isn't something they get to dictate to others. calling cps can be a pretty arrogant thing to do.

Back when I thought I wanted to be a principal I attended training done by an agency that was called in after Columbine to figure out where things went wrong leading up to the tragedy. I am so curious about whether they were called in in this case because so many of the things that happened were things that he spoke about. He said over and over again the following things that I feel are illustrated in this case: “Check the locker, check the bedroom.” “No one just snaps.” And, my favourite, “Schools are far more likely to under react to threats of violence than over react.”

Most school shooters leave red flags everywhere because they WANT to be caught. They want someone to step in and stop them. When I read the accounts I can’t believe the school let him go back to class. I can’t believe that they didn’t search the locker (and the backpack) based on what they knew. I don’t know if they are criminally responsible, but I can pretty much guarantee that the administrators in the school still blame themselves for what happened, and I think that blame is warranted.