Key hearing waived by Michigan school shooter

Ethan Crumbley, the 15-year-old facing murder charges over the November school shooting in Michigan that left four students dead, waived a key evidentiary hearing on Friday, a move that will send the case to a trial court. 

The hearing waived by Crumbley allowed prosecutors to provide evidence of probable cause, The Associated Press reported, which would have allowed them to bring felony charges against him.

The teen faces two dozen counts after four students were killed and seven others wounded during the school shooting in Oxford.

Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald has also charged Crumbley’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, with four counts each of involuntary manslaughter in light of evidence that showed troubling statements and images depicted by Crumbley and his parents’ refusal to bring him back home after school officials spoke to them regarding their concerns.

“The facts of this case are so egregious — reading this document, looking at it, reading the words ‘Help me’ with a gun, blood everywhere. This doesn’t just have impact on me as a prosecutor and a lawyer, it impacts me as a mother. The notion that a parent could read those words and also know that their son had access to a deadly weapon that they gave him is unconscionable and … I think it’s criminal,” McDonald said during a press conference in early December upon announcing the charges.

Crumbley’s parents have both pleaded not guilty to their charges.