Jennifer and James Crumbley are not the first parents to have a difficult, troubled, and potentially violent teenager.
But that does not exonerate the Michigan couple from a duty to take reasonable steps to protect others from the child.
Not only, according to authorities, did the Crumbleys fail in this parental and civic responsibility. They allegedly contributed to their son’s lethal capability by providing the 15-year-old with a gun as a present.
If anything Ethan Crumbley didn’t need, it was a firearm. That was poor judgment enough. But to leave the child in school, after being confronted with his own warnings that he might hurt others, was unconscionable.
Prosecutors in Rochester Hills, Michigan, are doing the right thing in pressing charges of involuntary manslaughter against the couple for the four students their son allegedly killed. A disturbed Ethan may have pulled the trigger, but he was enabled in that homicidal path by those who should have known better.
The criminal justice system should hold the parents accountable.
