Parents of Oxford school shooting victims blast state officials: 'Fix the damn system'

After nearly three years of begging for answers and full accountability, the families of the Oxford High School shooting victims implored state officials on Monday to investigate the Nov. 30, 2021, rampage, maintaining all requests to date for a thorough state probe have fallen on deaf ears in Lansing.

"We should not have to sit up here repeatedly saying, 'Do a damn investigation,' " said Oxford parent Steve St. Juliana, whose 14-year-old daughter Hana St. Juliana died in the 2021 shooting. He then directed his frustration toward Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, stating:

"Fix the damn system, forget about the roads. Keep our kids safe."

St. Juliana was among more than a dozen Oxford families who urged lawmakers on Monday to push for a state investigation with subpoena power that would, among other things, force all individuals connected to the events before the shooting to talk.

To date, no investigation has been completed with 100% participation of individuals who were tied to the events leading up to and during the Oxford shooting, which claimed the lives of four students: Hana St. Juliana, 14; Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17, and Justin Shilling, 17. Six other students and one teacher also were injured.

The shooter, Ethan Crumbley, pleaded guilty to all crimes and is serving a life-without-parole sentence. His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were also convicted of involuntary manslaughter over their roles in the shooting — they allowed him access to the gun — and are serving 10-year prison sentences.

But outside the criminal investigations and the parents' trials, the victims' families have learned very little about the events leading up to the shooting.

There was one investigation by a company called Guidepost Solutions , but two-thirds of the staff refused to cooperate in that investigation — including the two key school officials who made the controversial decision to let the teenage shooter return to class following a pivotal meeting, despite having received multiple warnings about his behavior in the days and hours before his rampage.

The victims' parents, meanwhile, say they have too many still-unanswered questions and maintain a state investigation is long overdue.

At Monday's news conference, they stressed that their request for a state investigation is not about pointing fingers and looking for people to prosecute. While achieving accountability is "part of the story," they said, they also are pushing for improved safety protocols, threat assessments, finding out who is actually in charge of public schools and learning more about what is driving young people to want to shoot up schools.

"We're infatuated with pointing the finger at the school, instead of thinking about why are people feeling this way," said parent Buck Myre, who lost his son Tate in the rampage.

Myre repeatedly posed this question: "Don't we want to learn from this?"

"It's been three years since the shooting and we haven't implemented any real change," Myre said. "This has always been about change."

But state officials, Myre said, aren't doing anything to help.

"Stop hiding. Stop making excuses," said Myre, who pleaded: "Just do an investigation. If it's Whitmer, if it's (Attorney General Dana) Nessel, if it's our state Legislature — I don't care who it is."

St. Juliana noted that the call for a state investigation isn't coming just from the victims' parents, but from the Oxford community as a whole: The school board, the Oxford Township police chief, fire officials and school families.

According to St. Juliana, one issue for the Oxford community as a whole is that Nessel has maintained that she doesn't have probable cause to conduct an investigation into the shooting. St. Juliana said he disagrees, maintaining the parents — and the Guidepost investigation — have provided a list of laws that were broken, including:

*In October 2023, the independent investigation by Guidepost Solutions concluded that the Oxford shooting was avoidable had the district followed a threat assessment policy, stating: "In certain critical areas, individuals at every level of the district ... failed to provide a safe and secure environment."

*The Guidepost investigation zeroed in on the shooter's graphic drawing and concluded that school counselor Sean Hopkins and former Dean of Students Nicholas Ejak should have elevated the concern to the principal, that suicide intervention protocols should have been activated and that the teen should have been sent home that day. None of that happened.

*According to Guidepost, Ejak and Hopkins — described in the report as "the two people with the most information about the decision to allow the shooter to go back to class — "refused to cooperate with our investigation."Guidepost reached out to 143 current or former Oxford Community Schools employees for interviews, but just 51 responded. Many denied interview requests or didn't respond.

*Guidepost asked the district to require employees to participate in the investigation, but the district refused to do so.

*Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel offered three times to review the school shooting, but the Oxford school board rejected all her offers.

*To date, no government entity has weighed in on the Guidepost investigation, or affirmed any of its findings.

Immediately following the parents' news conference on Monday, Nessel held a media briefing of her own to address their concerns, stressing that her office had offered multiple times to investigate the shooting, but that all her offers were "soundly rejected" by the Oakland County Sheriff's Office, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald and the Oxford school board.

"We offered immediately to help the sheriff's (office) — they declined. The sheriff flat-out refused. They said absolutely not. I asked the Oakland County prosecutor;. I offered it over and over again; each time the Oakland County prosecutor refused.

"To this day, let me make it clear, neither the Oakland County Sheriff's Office or the Prosecutor's Office has ever asked us to ever take part in a criminal investigation into what took place in Oxford."

Nessel, meanwhile, said she is committed to conducting an investigation into the shooting — maintaining that her offer has never been off the table — but that she will need the county prosecutor's office and the sheriff's office to cooperate and share all of its information with her office.

Both the Oakland County prosecutor's office and sheriff's office have said they are willing to cooperate.

Whitmer said she is also supportive of an independent investigation by the state into the Oxford shooting.

"As Michiganders, we have a responsibility to do everything we can to protect each other from gun violence. That's why Governor Whitmer has supported an independent review of the shooting to ensure that families have answers to their questions and to help school districts around the state better protect students," Whitmer's office said in a statement issued Monday, noting several state efforts have been made since the 2021 massacre to address gun violence.

For example, in February, Whitmer signed a new safe-storage bill that requires firearms be stored in a manner so children can't access them, and, holds parents criminally liable if a child gets a hold of a gun and hurts themselves or someone else with it. Michigan also has new legislation requiring background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, and has established extreme risk protection orders to ensure people who have been deemed a threat to themselves or others can't access dangerous weapons.

To date, no school officials have been held accountable for the shooting. The Oakland County Prosecutor's Office has said that it will not criminally charge any school officials, maintaining there is no evidence to point to any criminal wrongdoing.

And while there are multiple lawsuits on behalf of the victims' families pending against the school district and school officials, all have been dismissed on immunity grounds. Those lawsuits are now hung up in appeals.

"There has to be some level of accountability," St. Juliana said. "You can't drive change without accountability."

More: Oxford High School officials assured they would not be prosecuted

St. Juliana noted that other states have addressed the issue of immunity not being automatic for public entities like schools. For example, he said, in the wake of the Columbine shooting, Colorado changed its law to state that in cases of school violence, immunity is not automatic for schools.

Michigan, however, has not passed any such law. There's a bill addressing this issue, St. Juliana said, but it remains in limbo.

"The time for excuses have passed," said St. Juliana, who called on multiple state officials to push for a statewide investigation. "It's about the governor, the attorney general, the speaker of the house and the senate majority leader sitting down. It's as simple as that."

And until that happens, St. Juliana said, the parents will continue to push.

"We said from the very beginning that we are not going anywhere," he said, stressing that without a state investigation, more tragedy awaits. "It's not a matter of if a school shooting happens, but when."

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