Ethan Crumbley was 15 years old when he opened fire on November 30, 2021, with a semi-automatic pistol that his father had bought him as a Christmas present a few days earlier. He shot dead four classmates and injured six other students and a teacher.
Crumbley’s parents have been charged for their role in the massacre. Before the shooting, the teachers had informed them that their son was looking for ammunition on the Internet, but despite those messages, they did not intervene. This makes it one of the first American cases in which parents are held responsible for a school shooting by their child.
Relatives of the victims had urged the judge to lock up Crumbley for the rest of his life.