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Judge Rules Oxford High School Staff Can’t Be Sued Over 2021 Mass Shooting

The judge’s ruling comes after victims’ families filed suits, alleging staff and admin did not take appropriate action to prevent Ethan Crumbley from killing 4 students.

A Michigan judge has ruled that Oxford High School—where then 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley killed four students and wounded seven on Nov. 30, 2021—along with its staff and teachers cannot be sued for the mass shooting. The ruling comes after some of the victims’ families sued staff for allegedly mishandling warning signs Crumbley presented, including not alerting a school resource officer about their concerns after he was caught looking at ammunition on his phone and failing to search his backpack before he was sent back to class about 3 hours before the shooting. In her decision, Judge Mary Ellen Brennan wrote, “the court concludes that Ethan Crumbley’s act of firing the gun, rather than the alleged conduct of the individual Oxford defendants, was ‘the one most immediate, efficient, and direct cause of the injury or damage.’” Meanwhile, Crumbley’s parents are facing charges of involuntary manslaughter, with prosecutors alleging they ignored their son’s struggle with mental health, as well as failed to alert school officials that he had access to a gun at home.