Last week’s shooting rampage at a Michigan high school was “entirely preventable,” the parents of two students alleged as they filed two $100 million lawsuits Thursday against the school district.
Jeffrey and Brandi Franz filed the lawsuits in federal court in Detroit on behalf of their daughters, Bella and Riley, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Riley, a 17-year-old senior, was wounded in the neck during the Nov. 30 mass shooting at Oxford High School that left four students dead and seven others injured. Her 14-year-old sister, Bella, was not hurt, but the ninth-grader saw Riley being shot after they exited a bathroom, attorney Geoffrey Fieger said.
The attorney accused Oxford school district officials of allowing Ethan Crumbley, a 15-year-old sophomore, to “return to class with a gun in his backpack” and more than 30 rounds of ammunition despite knowing he was a “homicidal” threat.
“He was allowed to carry it out,” Figer said. “How in the world does a 15-year-old get armed to commit murder in schools?”
The gun used in the shooting was purchased days earlier by Ethan’s father, James Crumbley, prosecutors have said. He and his wife, Jennifer Crumbley, were later charged with involuntary manslaughter.
Ethan, who was arrested at the school, has been charged as an adult with murder, terrorism and other counts. He and his parents have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The lawsuits are first known civil filings in the aftermath of the shooting, which Fieger said displayed that “nothing’s changed” since the 1999 massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School, where students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people before taking their own lives.
“I could talk about the hundreds of thousands of children who are traumatized for life, like Bella and Rikey, afraid at any moment someone might start shooting,” Fieger said.
The lawsuits name as defendants the Oxford school district, Superintendent Timothy Throne, Principal Steven Wolf, its dean of students, two counselors, two teachers and a staff member.
District officials did not return a call seeking comment Thursday, the Associated Press reported.
One of the lawsuits accused school officials of allowing Ethan Crumbley to “carry out his murderous rampage” after they met with him and his parents the morning before after he was seen looking for ammunition on his cellphone, the Free Press reported.
Then, on the morning of the massacre, Ethan was found with a note depicting a semiautomatic handgun and someone bleeding.
“The thoughts won’t stop,” the note reportedly read. “Help me.”
The teen’s parents were called to the school and ordered to get Ethan into counseling within 48 hours, but they resisted that course of action and abruptly left the meeting. Ethan went back to class with his backpack, which police believe contained the gun and ammo used in the shooting rampage, the newspaper reported.
The lawsuit alleges the two girls are protected under the 14th Amendment, namely their right to be free from danger allegedly created by the defendants.
“We hope by this lawsuit to make the financial cost of allowing children to be slaughtered very high so as to compel people to do something,” Fieger told reporters.
With Post wires