The parents of the Michigan high school shooting suspect are charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the rampage

By Sonia Moghe and Aya Elamroussi, CNN

[Breaking news update, published at 12:36 p.m. ET]

The parents of the 15-year-old charged in this week’s deadly shooting at Michigan’s Oxford High School have been charged with four counts each of homicide involuntary manslaughter.

The charges against James and Jennifer Crumbley were filed Friday morning in 52nd District Court in Rochester Hills.

It is rare for parents to be charged like this, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said.

“What the prosecutor is saying is: Let’s look at the parents’ responsibility,” Honig said. “This is really a new frontier.”

James Crumbley bought the gun four days before it was used in the shooting, prosecutor Karen McDonald said Friday at a news conference. Sophomore Ethan Crumbley was with him and later posted on social media about the gun.

Jennifer Crumbley also posted about the gun on social media, calling it “his new Christmas present,” McDonald said.

“It’s been a devastating week for us,” McDonald said. “There are other individuals who contributed, … and it’s my intention to hold them accountable as well.”

Prosecutors will try to show that Ethan Crumbley’s parents were criminally negligent and contributed to or caused a dangerous situation, Honig said.

[Original story, published at 8:43 a.m. ET]

There is a “strong possibility” the 15-year-old sophomore accused of killing four fellow students this week at a Michigan high school had the gun in his backpack when he met shortly before the shooting with administrators and his parents over his concerning behavior that day, the prosecutor in the case told CNN on Thursday night.

But at that point, no disciplinary action was warranted, the school district superintendent said Thursday.

Ethan Crumbley has been charged as an adult with terrorism, murder and other counts in Tuesday’s shooting that also left seven people wounded at Oxford High School north of Detroit. It was the deadliest shooting at a US K-12 campus since 2018 and the 32nd such attack since August 1.

Hours before the rampage, a teacher saw Crumbley engage in “concerning” behavior that prompted school officials to pull him into an office and call his parents for a meeting, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard told CNN. After that discussion, Crumbley was allowed back to class.

“No discipline was warranted. There are no discipline records at the high school,” Tim Throne, the superintendent of the Oxford Community Schools district, said Thursday in a video statement. “Yes, this student did have contact with our front office. And yes, his parents were on campus November 30th.”

There is a “strong possibility” Crumbley had the gun he allegedly used in the shooting in his backpack during the meeting, prosecutor Karen McDonald of Oakland County told CNN.

“During Covid, they don’t use lockers, so they just have backpacks,” she said.

“Unfortunately, he was allowed to get back to class, and we now know that he had a weapon with him at that time, and that is simply tragic,” McDonald said.

The school’s video surveillance cameras will let investigators “really map out exactly and literally watch what the perpetrator did” from that meeting through the shooting and being taken into custody, Bouchard told CNN’s “New Day” on Friday morning.

The shooter had the gun “on his person or in his backpack or somehow secreted” it away from a school location, he said.

Another warning sign had come Monday — the day before the shooting — when a different teacher “saw and heard something that she felt was disturbing” related to Crumbley’s conduct in the classroom, Bouchard said. School officials held a counseling session with Crumbley about the behavior in question, and his parents were notified by phone, Bouchard added.

Both McDonald and Bouchard have declined to expand on the details of the meetings or the conduct that prompted them.

Parents could be charged on Friday

The semiautomatic handgun recovered in the attack was bought by Crumbley’s father on November 26, four days before the shooting, Bouchard has said.

McDonald is expected to announce Friday if charges will be filed against Crumbley’s parents, she told CNN. Prosecutors are considering information regarding the purchase of the gun and its accessibility and storage, along with other details. The weapon is a 9mm Sig Sauer SP2022 pistol, authorities have said.

A photo of the pistol believed to have been used in the shooting was posted to an Instagram account days earlier, a law enforcement source with direct knowledge told CNN.

The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office believes the account belongs to Ethan Crumbley, the source said.

“Just got my new beauty today. SIG SAUER 9mm,” reads the caption under the post, which is no longer available online but was shared widely on social media.

Crumbley cannot legally own the weapon or take it outside the home, with few exceptions, like to a shooting range, Bouchard said Friday. A key question will concern how the teen got the gun — whether perhaps he broke into something to get it, for instance.

Crumbley’s defense attorney asked the court Wednesday to enter a not guilty plea on his client’s behalf. CNN has attempted to reach Crumbley’s parents and is trying to identify their attorney and a new attorney for their son.

School is like a ‘war zone,’ superintendent says

Two days after the deadly attack, Oxford High School is “like a war zone,” Throne told his community from the school in the 13-minute video posted on YouTube.

“This high school is a wreck right now,” he said, adding repairs could take weeks.

The shooting claimed the lives of Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Justin Shilling, 17, officials have said.

Throne commended students and staff for how they handled an active shooter threat, during which some administrators performed CPR and students used desks and chairs to barricade themselves inside classrooms for protection.

More than 100 calls to 911 were made to report the shooting as police rushed to the school at 12:52 p.m. local time, Bouchard said. Within “two to three minutes” of officers’ arrival, the shooter had surrendered.

“I believe they literally saved lives, having taken down the suspect with a loaded firearm still in the building,” the sheriff said.

The superintendent acknowledged district officials have not been communicating quickly and said he’s working on meeting with the parents of the four students killed in the shooting.

“I apologized to our staff today that we haven’t been communicating sooner, and that’s OK. It’s OK because in this instance, we have to go by the book and we simply cannot communicate things until others have communicated things,” Throne explained. “And this is as much information as we can give you today.”

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CNN’s Carolyn Sung, Sahar Akbarzai, Taylor Romine, Shimon Prokupecz, Kristina Sgueglia and Adrienne Broaddus contributed to this report.