How parents are being held responsible after school shootings. Victims' families weigh in on accountability.
Since the 1999 Columbine high school massacre in Colorado, there have been 84 mass shootings at schools across the United States.
Each tragedy is uniquely horrific. But the response from lawmakers has become frustratingly predictable: condolences, partisan rhetoric, and ultimately, inaction.
Which is why we took note of how some prosecutors are pursuing these cases. They're not just putting the gunman behind bars: they're starting to hold the shooters' parents responsible.
For the past two weeks, the father of an accused high school mass shooter has been on trial in Barrow County, Georgia.
Prosecutors there argue that he ignored red flags about his son before the teen shot up Apalachee High in 2024, a tragedy that left four dead.
It's not the first time the parent has been put on trial.
Tonight, we'll look at the precedent-setting case out of Oxford, Michigan, and ask whether holding parents accountable is enough to break the cycle of school shooting violence.
Four years ago, on a cold November day, a gunman opened fire at Oxford High School – about 40 miles north of Detroit.
A 15-year-old student walked the halls armed with a 9- millimeter handgun, killing four schoolmates. Among them: 16-year-old Tate Myre, a star athlete and student mentor, and 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana, just three months into her freshman year.
Steve St. Juliana: Hana was-- a bright light making people laugh is I think what most people remember about her. Her smile and her laugh.
Buck Myre: Tate had a crazy, crazy, awesome zest for life. He was an incredible soul.
Buck Myre and Steve St. Juliana now find themselves on a growing list of families whose children have been killed in school shootings.
Sharyn Alfonsi: How are we doing as a country? Moving towards this not happening again?
Buck Myre: We're not moving in that direction.
Steve St. Juliana: Yeah, we're going backwards at the moment.
Buck Myre: Yup.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Why do you say that?
Steve St. Juliana: Changes that have been made-- at legislative level. Trying to add more mental health support-- more-- gun control. It's all being reversed.
Buck Myre: We don't seem to be wantin' to learn from 'em, you know?-- I feel like we need to get in prevention.
Prevention might have protected Oxford High students from this moment.
There were red flags for months.
Prosecutors say the gunman, Ethan Crumbley, had texted his mother on multiple occasions that he saw demons in the family home.
Three months before the shooting, he assured a friend he was "just kidding" after he texted that "it's time to shoot up the school."
And 24 hours before the attack, his troubling conduct escalated. According to prosecutors and court testimony, here's what happened.
A teacher emailed administrators that she saw the sophomore looking at "different bullets" online in class.
A school administrator left a voicemail for the boy's mother. She didn't respond but later texted her son: "lol i'm not mad you have to learn not to get caught"
The next morning, just hours before the shooting, another teacher alerted administrators that the teen's math worksheet had drawings of a gun, a bullet and a person bleeding, along with the words: "the thoughts won't stop help me" "blood everywhere."
He was taken to a guidance counselor's office and his parents were called in.
The counselor testified that he recommended therapy and suggested the Crumbleys take their son home but they refused, citing work.
The meeting lasted just 12 minutes.
They left and he went back to class. His backpack was never checked.
Two hours later, surveillance video shows, the 15-year-old walked into the bathroom, pulled a gun out of that backpack, entered the hallway and started shooting.
Police found his journal on the bathroom floor – detailing his desire and plan to shoot up his classmates.
Later, investigators learned that just three days before the attack, his mother had taken him to a shooting range with that 9-millimeter handgun, which his father had purchased for him as an early Christmas present.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Do you think his parents failed him?
Steve St. Juliana: Yes. I think there was plenty of red flags there for them to be-- aware that he was in crisis. And their answer to that was to go buy him a gun and take him shooting, which there's nothing wrong with that activity in and of itself. But when that's your answer to a child in crisis, that's a problem.
Buck Myre: I'll never forgive him right, but this kid was asking for help at every level and he didn't get it. And he did something horrible.
He pled guilty to all charges and was sentenced to life in prison. But prosecutors argued he wasn't the only one to blame.
His parents were each convicted of four counts of involuntary manslaughter for failing to secure the gun and ignoring the warning signs of their son's mental health crisis.
They were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.
It is the first time that parents – anywhere in the country – have been held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by their child.
Steve St. Juliana: Our society refuses to take significant action to protect our children. So, one of the only places that we can put this back onto are the parents.
Buck Myre: What's really unfortunate here is when you wanna think about this shooting and accountability, only the shooter and the parents have been held accountable. There's been no accountability at the school.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Should the school bear some responsibility?
Buck Myre: Absolutely. I mean, they're in the business of kids. I mean, the kid was in a counseling office. He was obviously in crisis. He basically already had a gun in his hand. And the counseling office fumbled it.
Victims' lawsuits against school officials and the district have been dismissed, citing Michigan's government immunity laws – which protect public entities and their employees from being sued.
Buck Myre: -- immunity is driving inaction.
Steve St. Juliana: Yeah. The law enforcement says, "Well, we don't wanna waste our time doing the investigation 'cause they've got immunity." Prosecutors are the same way, they don't wanna prosecute or try to prosecute because well, they're coming up against immunity.
Sharyn Alfonsi: So why bother?
Steve St. Juliana: So why bother, and that's where we've gone. I mean, we've fought consistently-- just to have this investigation done.
Sharyn Alfonsi: I imagine that there will be people who say, "The schools are already stretched thin. They don't have the ability to do much with a kid who's in trouble."
Buck Myre: We can't let them off the hook. This was preventable.
There are no national standards after a school shooting, no federal mandates for state reviews or investigations. Typically, the FBI is only required to investigate if it is considered an act of terror or a hate crime.
After months of pressure from the community, the Oxford school board hired a private security firm called Guidepost to conduct an independent investigation.
But that path was full of roadblocks. Guidepost doesn't have the legal authority to compel testimony.
So, of the 161 people they asked to interview, Guidepost reported that approximately 70 refused or would not respond, including two school employees who met with the shooter hours before the incident.
The district told us that many staff members had given depositions in court proceedings – but according to Guidepost, those interviews didn't fully address all of their questions.
Guidepost concluded the teachers at Oxford High acted appropriately by immediately raising concerns.
Guidepost investigators faulted the school for not following established "threat assessment" protocols, writing – "this tragedy was avoidable."
The Michigan Attorney General's Office says it is now investigating.
James Densley and Jillian Peterson are professors of criminology and founders of the Violence Prevention Project, a St. Paul, Minnesota, based nonprofit that studies mass shootings.
James Densley: You think about all the things that were learned after 9/11, and how that created an entire infrastructure and an apparatus around dealing with terrorism, we don't see that same type of urgency with the mass shooting problem. Instead, we get sort of thoughts and prayers. We get a situation where we pit off imperfect solutions against each other, 'cause no one can agree on anything. And then that creates a situation where there's no action. So what is missing is that definitive action where we can create a template that everybody else then follows-- suit.
Densley and Peterson have spent the last 10 years researching hundreds of mass shootings, interviewing those who knew the gunmen and also the shooters themselves, hoping to better understand their pathways to violence and how to stop them.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What's the pattern that emerged from the data?
Jillian Peterson: We saw an early childhood with a lot of pretty significant violence, or neglect, domestic violence in the home, that kind of laid the foundation.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Did you ever say to any of these mass shooters: Could somebody have stopped you?
Jillian Peterson: That was one of the questions I asked every time. Is there anyone or anything that could've stopped you? And every person we talked to said yes. One of them even said, "I think anyone could have stopped me."
Their research shows that over 90% of all school mass shooters broadcast their plans online or in person before they commit the atrocity.
Investigators say the gunmen in Parkland, Florida; Uvalde, Texas and Apalachee High in Winder, Georgia, all told people about their intent before the attacks.
Jillian Peterson: They're feeling hopeless. And they feel isolated and they're looking for that notoriety.
Sharyn Alfonsi: They wanna be seen no matter how dysfunctionally.
Jillian Peterson: No matter how dysfunctionally. It's better than not being seen.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Often you see after-- a school shooting, more metal detectors, clear backpacks-- and drills. If a school is given those kind of emergency resources to make their kids safer, is that the best use of them?
Jillian Peterson: It's not the best use of them. And all of that security ends up being kind of theatrical, right? Like, it makes you feel better, maybe. But if a student is the perpetrator, it doesn't do anything. And so you're better off spending resources on things like teams that communicate with each other, right, school-based mental health, crisis intervention, suicide prevention...
Sharyn Alfonsi: And the data bears that out.
Jillian Peterson: The data over and over again bears that out. The best thing we can do to prevent violence is not to push kids out, it's to actually pull them in.
The researchers are part of a pilot program in Minnesota, designed to teach school staff how to identify kids in crisis and wrap them up with services.
In 2022 after Uvalde, Congress passed a bipartisan bill that included a billion dollars in grants for mental health services at schools. But last April, the majority of that funding was discontinued.
The Department of Education explained the programs conflicted with the administration's priorities.
In December, it awarded $208 million for credentialed school mental health providers, a fraction of the original funding.
Steve St. Juliana: Something has to change. I mean, gun violence is the number one killer of our children in America and our society currently seems to have its head in the ground in refusing to acknowledge this-- just saying, "Oh, it's the way it is." No, that's a ridiculous answer. This is not something that is insurmountable. We can make great strides to prevent this from happening again. We just aren't.
Produced by Ashley Velie. Associate producer, Eliza Costas. Broadcast associate, Erin DuCharme. Edited by Michael Mongulla.