(NewsNation) — The father of one of the victims of the Oxford High School shooting says the conviction of the shooter’s mother makes him feel like his voice has been heard.
Jennifer Crumbley was found guilty on four counts of manslaughter Tuesday by a Michigan jury that concluded she failed to prevent her son’s actions.
Buck Myre’s son Tate was killed in the November 2021 shooting.
“Today, the people spoke,” Myre said Tuesday on “CUOMO.” “For me as a sportsman and a responsible gun owner — I love to target shoot — I feel like for once my voice is heard in this.”
During the trial, prosecutors contended that Jennifer Crumbley should have foreseen that her son Ethan would commit the shooting that killed four of his classmates.
Jennifer’s husband, 47-year-old James Crumbley, is also facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter. His trial is set to begin in March.
Prosecutors say Ethan’s parents were grossly negligent when they failed to tell Oxford High School officials the family had guns, including a 9 mm handgun that was used by their son at a shooting range just a few days earlier.
Besides knowledge of the gun, the Crumbleys are accused of ignoring their son’s mental health needs. In a journal found by police in his backpack, the son wrote that his parents wouldn’t listen to his pleas for help.
Steve St. Juliana, whose daughter was killed in the shooting, called the verdict an “important first step” in potentially preventing future tragedies.
However, both he and Myre said the verdict alone — and the potential legal precedent it could set — won’t solve the problem of school shootings in America.
“This isn’t the fix,” Myre said.
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“It’s one small piece of the puzzle that needs to be put together to force all the changes necessary to protect our children,” St. Juliana added.
On the morning of Nov. 30, 2021, school staff members were concerned about a violent drawing of a gun, bullet and wounded man, accompanied by desperate phrases, on Ethan Crumbley’s math assignment. His parents were called to the school for a meeting, but they didn’t take the boy home.
A few hours later, Ethan Crumbley pulled a handgun from his backpack and shot 10 students and a teacher. No one had checked the backpack.
“There was a huge systemic failure here,” Myre said.
The gun was the Sig Sauer 9 mm his father had purchased with him just four days earlier. Jennifer Crumbley had taken her son to a shooting range that same weekend.
Outside the courthouse, the jury forewoman, who declined to give her name, said jurors were influenced by evidence that Jennifer Crumbley was the last adult to possess the gun. That “really hammered it home,” she told reporters.
For St. Juliana, the verdict provided him relief there has finally been some accountability.
“This morning, I felt like they were going to come back with not guilty, just because I’m quite cynical of humanity at the moment, understandably I think,” St. Juliana said. “They looked at the evidence, used just plain common sense and came back with the right verdict.”
The maximum penalty for involuntary manslaughter is 15 years in prison. The Crumbleys have been in jail for more than two years, unable to post $500,000 bond while awaiting trial.
The judge ordered a sentencing for Jennifer on April 9.
NewsNation digital producer Urja Sinha and The Associated Press contributed to this report.