Mother of Michigan school shooter testifies it was her husband’s responsibility....

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Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the teenager who killed four people at a Michigan high school in 2021, took the stand in her manslaughter trial Thursday and testified it was her husband’s responsibility to store their son Ethan’s gun safely.

“I just didn’t feel comfortable being in charge of that. It was more his thing, so I let him handle that. I didn’t feel comfortable putting the lock thing on it,” she said.

Her husband, James Crumbley, and their son bought the 9 mm gun on Black Friday while she was out shopping, she testified.

She said she has not spoken to her husband since the day of their arrest on December 4, 2021, four days after the shooting. She also acknowledged she had been in an extramarital affair for about six months leading up to the shooting, but she said she did not believe it affected her parenting.

The key testimony comes as part of Jennifer Crumbley’s trial on four counts of involuntary manslaughter for her role in the November 30, 2021, mass shooting at Oxford High School, which left four students dead and seven others wounded. Her husband is scheduled to go on trial on the same charges in early March.

The prosecution rested its case Thursday after about a week of testimony from shooting victims, law enforcement officials, school officials and those who knew Jennifer Crumbley. The prosecution has used an unusual and novel legal theory by arguing she is responsible for the deaths because she was “grossly negligent” in getting a gun for her son and failing to get him proper mental health treatment despite warning signs.

However, the defense argued in opening statements that the blame lay elsewhere: On the husband for purchasing the firearm and encouraging the hobby; on the school for failing to notify her about her son’s behavioral issues; and on Ethan himself, who actually pulled the trigger.

Until Thursday, the jury had heard only some of Jennifer Crumbley’s perspective during the trial. In Facebook messages she sent to an extramarital lover shortly after the shooting, she wrote, “I failed as a parent. I failed miserably.”

On the stand Thursday, she explained that message further. “I don’t think I’m a failure as a parent, but at that time, I guess I didn’t see – I felt bad that Ethan was sad at those things and I guess I just – I felt like I failed somewhere.”

“As a parent you spend your whole life trying to protect your child from other dangers,” she testified. “You never would think you have to protect your child from harming someone else. That’s what blew my mind. That was the hardest thing I had to stomach was that my child harmed and killed other people.”

Yet she had no regrets. “I’ve asked myself if I would have done anything differently, and I wouldn’t have,” she said.

Still, she said she wished everything had gone differently.

“I wish he would have killed us instead.”

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