The mother of a teenage boy who shot dead four students at his high school in the United States took the stand for the second day on Friday at her high-profile trial on involuntary manslaughter charges.
Jennifer Crumbley, 45, and her 47-year-old husband James Crumbley are each charged with four counts of manslaughter. They are reportedly the first parents of a school shooter to face felony charges in the US for the actions of their child.
Their son, Ethan Crumbley, 17, is serving a life sentence for the November 2021 shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan which left four students between the ages of 14 and 17 dead.
During the trial, Brian Meloche, who is a long-time friend of Jennifer, said that the two had been having an affair when Ethan carried out the school shooting. She had confirmed they had an affair while testifying on Thursday.
According to a report, Jennifer and Brian, a firefighter chief, also held sex parties at hotels.
They would often find strangers on a swingers app called Adult Friend Finder and arrange “meet-ups” with them at a hotel after work, the New York Post reported citing prosecutors.
Jennifer admitted to using the app to “arrange for other people to meet us there” but claimed she was going to hotels after work “on business”, the report said.
Prosecutor Says Jennifer Crumbley Bears Responsibility In Son’s School Shooting
Earlier on Thursday, Michigan prosecutors told jurors that Jennifer Crumbley failed to do several “tragically small and easy things” that could have prevented four deaths.
Prosecutor Marc Keast told jurors during his opening that Jennifer knew her son was in a “downward spiral” mentally, and that only she and her husband could have known of the danger that Ethan posed to others, and that he had access to a gun.
“The evidence will show you that she didn’t pull the trigger, but she is responsible for those deaths,” Keast said.
“She didn’t do any number of tragically small and easy things that would have prevented all this from happening,” he added.
Shannon Smith, Jennifer Crumbley’s defense attorney, said during her own opening that her client had no way of knowing that her son was going to kill four of his classmates.
“Jennifer Crumbley was the mother to a 15-year-old son and she did not have it on her radar in anyway that there was any mental disturbance, that her son would ever take a gun into a school, that her son would ever shoot people,” Smith told jurors.
Smith added that it was James Crumbley – and not Jennifer – who was in charge of making sure that a trigger lock was on the gun that Ethan used in the shooting.