After the fatal shooting in a school in the US state of Michigan, prosecutors have indicted the parents of the alleged 15-year-old perpetrator. James and Jennifer C. are each charged with four cases of manslaughter, Prosecutor Karen McDonald said. The parents bought the murder weapon, allowed their underage son access to the pistol and ignored warnings, said McDonald. 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.
According to police, the 15-year-old killed four students on Tuesday with the weapon that his father had bought days earlier. He also injured six students and a teacher. The tenth grader is charged with, among other things, terrorism resulting in death and quadruple homicide as an adult. The prosecution assumes an intentional act.
Father James bought the gun on November 26th in the presence of his son. On the same day, the son published a photo of it on social media with the comment “I got my new beauty today,” as McDonald said. In Oxford high school, the son was caught by a teacher while he was looking for ammunition on the Internet. The school informed the mother by phone and email, but received no answer. The mother wrote the following SMS to the son: “lol – I’m not mad. You have to learn not to get caught”.
On the morning of the deed, a teacher found a drawing on the later shooter that she found so disturbing that she took a photo of it. According to the prosecutor, a drawing of the weapon could be seen on it. In addition, it said: “The thoughts do not want to stop. Help me.” Next to the drawing of a sphere there were the words “blood everywhere”, and elsewhere it said “the world is dead”. The parents were then immediately summoned to the school. The son changed the drawing before meeting the parents. In the meeting, the parents did not ask the son if he had his gun with him, McDonald said.
“The idea that a parent reads these words and knows that their son had access to a deadly weapon that they gave him is unimaginable. And I think it’s criminal,” McDonald told journalists.
Mother wrote a message to her son
The parents refused to take their son home, so he went back to the classroom. They wouldn’t have searched his backpack for the gun either. 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 stated that his weapon was missing, as the prosecutor described. The gun was stored in an unlocked drawer in the parents’ bedroom, McDonald said. “Gun owners have a responsibility,” she warned.
Fatal incidents continue to occur in the United States because shooters open fire in schools. Gun law in the United States differs from state to state, but firearms such as pistols and assault rifles are usually relatively easy to come by. Stricter gun laws usually fail because of the Republicans in Congress and the powerful gun lobby. US President Joe Biden has announced measures to curb armed violence, but so far without concrete results.
On Friday, authorities in the US state of Georgia reported that a 13-year-old alleged arms dealer had accidentally shot his sister according to initial findings. The teenager wanted to sell one of his self-made weapons, said the sheriff in charge, Tim Pounds. The two alleged buyers stole the weapon and fled. The 13-year-old then shot and fatally hit his 14-year-old sister. The incident is said to have occurred at the family home in Douglasville.