When a student shoots around in a US school, the parents are almost never charged. In this case, according to the public prosecutor, the parents are said to have acted with gross negligence. You are said to have ignored several critical warnings.
The judiciary is accusing James and Jennifer C. of manslaughter on four counts, Oakland County Attorney Karen McDonald said. The father and his son bought the weapon, a semi-automatic pistol, four days before the crime. The teenager’s mother is said to have referred to the gun on online platforms as a “Christmas present” for her son, the prosecutor said.
Prosecutor Karen McDonald wants to send a message to all gun owners with the indictment
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After an incident shortly before the crime in which they were summoned to school with violent fantasies about drawings by their son, the parents did not check whether the teenager had the weapon, the prosecutor said. They refused to take their son home, so he went back to the classroom. In addition, the parents did not search his backpack for the weapon.
When it became known that someone at the school was shooting at people, the mother wrote her son a message saying “don’t do it”. The father then drove home and called the police a short time later and said that his gun was missing, as McDonald described.
“Outrageous” facts
“These charges are intended to bring accountability to those who contributed to this tragedy and to send a message to gun owners that they have a responsibility,” said the prosecutor. Charges against the parents of a perpetrator of such violence in schools are very rare, but in this case the facts are “outrageous,” she said. The gun was stored in an unlocked drawer in the parents’ bedroom, McDonald said. “Gun owners have a responsibility,” she warned.
The 15-year-old opened fire on Tuesday at his high school in the small town of Oxford, north of Detroit. He killed four classmates between the ages of 14 and 17 and injured seven other people. After the fact, he was arrested without resistance and was subsequently charged, among other things, with quadruple murder and terrorism. The prosecution assumes an intentional act.
According to adult criminal law, the teenager should be tried. He faces life imprisonment.
US President Joe Biden has announced measures to curb armed violence, but so far without concrete results.
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