A 15-year-old Oxford High School sophomore, armed with a semiautomatic handgun, is accused of a shooting at his school Tuesday afternoon, killing three students and injuring seven others and a teacher.
Authorities have arrested the suspected shooter, who was identified Wednesday as Ethan Crumbley of the Village of Oxford. The county prosecutor is seeking to charge him as an adult with terrorism, first-degree murder, and use of a firearm.
The teen was under suicide watch, County Executive David Coulter said.
“We’ve recovered some evidence that we’re now beginning to pore over,” said Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard. “I’ve seen some of the actual video of the shooting itself and it’s clear that he came out with the intent to kill people. He was shooting people in close range, oftentimes towards the head or chest.”
Bouchard said Crumbley fired bullets through some barricaded doors.
“We know he couldn’t get into some of those classrooms, and I think that saved lives,” said Bouchard. “So the only silver lining is that our training and their training saved lives.”
Still, Bouchard said, “the tragedy is not lost on us.”
The incident unfolded in about five minutes and police said Crumbley, who was not injured, was arrested with a 9mm handgun that still contained rounds of live ammunition.
The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said that the suspect still had 18 rounds of ammunition left at the time he was arrested.
Michael McCabe, the Oakland County undersheriff who lives about 1½ miles from the school, said it appeared the suspect operated alone but investigators were interviewing students and scouring social media for clues to a motive.
The four students who died as a result of the shooting are Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, a 16-year-old football player who died en route to the hospital; and 17-year-old Justin Shilling, who died Wednesday morning.
Six other students who suffered gunshot injuries were treated at area hospitals.
A 47-year-old teacher also was wounded in the mass shooting. The teacher, Bouchard said, “has been thankfully discharged. She had a left shoulder gunshot wound that appears to have been a grazing wound.”
A few candlelight vigils after the shooting were held in nearby communities, Kensington Church in Lake Orion and LakePoint Community Church in Oxford.
There were tears, hugging and disbelief as students, parents and friends gathered together for a prayer service on Tuesday night, to cope with what happened at Oxford High School.
In 2021, the group Everytown for Gun Safety said there were at least 144 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, resulting in 28 deaths and 86 injuries nationally.
According to the news outlet Education Week, there have been 29 school shootings resulting in injury or death so far in 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/us/us-school-shootings-2021.html
When it comes to how American children are exposed to gun violence, gunfire at schools is just the tip of the iceberg–every year, more than 3,000 children and teens are shot and killed and 15,000 more are shot and injured.
An estimated 3 million children in the US are exposed to shootings per year. Witnessing shootings—whether in their schools, their communities or their homes–can have a devastating impact.
An 18-year-old student was shot and killed, and a 17-year-old student was shot and wounded, on June 6, 2021, at the field at Underhill Sports Complex, in Maplewood, New Jersey.
On August 30, 2021, a 17-year-old boy was shot and killed while leaving Lights On, a program at West Side High School in Newark, New Jersey, that gives young people a safe space to play sports and do laundry after 6 p.m. Police have not identified or arrested any suspects.