Shooting at US school: perpetrator’s father convicted of negligent homicide

In 2021, a teenager shot four teenagers at a school in the US state of Michigan – the murder weapon was a gift from his parents. After the mother, the father has now also been found guilty of negligent homicide.

After the mother, the father of a teenager who shot four students at a school in the US state of Michigan in 2021 has now been found guilty of negligent homicide. A jury announced its verdict Thursday evening in Pontiac, Michigan.

A few weeks earlier, the teenager’s mother had also been convicted of four counts of negligent homicide. Although fathers and mothers have sometimes been held responsible for negligent behavior in the past, this case marked the first time that parents of an underage shooter were found guilty of negligent homicide. The sentence against the father and mother will be announced at a later date – they now each face 15 years in prison.

Parents gave son the gun

In November 2021, her then 15-year-old son Ethan C. opened fire with a Sig Sauer pistol at his school in the small town of Oxford, north of Detroit. He killed four classmates between the ages of 14 and 17 and injured six other students and a teacher. Last December, the attacker was sentenced to life in prison. He did not testify in the trials against his parents.

In an unusual step in the USA, the authorities also initiated investigations against the teenager’s parents. After the attack, serious allegations were made against them because they had bought the murder weapon a few days before the crime and given their underage son access to it.

Charge: Son abandoned

They are also said to have ignored warnings from the boy’s school environment. The parents were called to the school on the day of the crime because drawings by the 15-year-old with violent fantasies had been found. They are said to have refused to take their son home – and also did not check whether the teenager had the weapon with him. A short time later, the teenager opened fatal fire.

In her closing argument, prosecutor Karen McDonald said the perpetrator’s father had not only abandoned his son. He also violated his legal duty “to prevent these children from being killed.” Attorney Mariell Lehman, however, said her client could not have known that he had to protect others from his son. “He had no idea what his son was planning.”