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Manuel Oliver says Jennifer Crumbley’s conviction is something to “celebrate”.
“I do think — and I hope — that this will start a new wave of accountability that expands to anyone that is somehow responsible,” he tells The Independent following her February conviction.
To him, as the father of Joaquin Oliver, who was killed in the Parkland mass school shooting, the conviction of the mother of a school shooter marks something of a turning point.
It suggests that “we’re looking at these [cases] in a new way,” he says.
No one is “complaining about the verdict”, he adds. “So we all agree, all gun owners…and of course, people like me” that Crumbley “is responsible in some way.”
In a landmark case on 6 February, Crumbley was found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter after her son, Ethan Crumbley, opened fire inside Oxford High School in November 2021, killing four of his classmates and injuring seven other victims. Just weeks later, her husband James Crumbley was also convicted of the same charges.
It’s an outcome that is pushing new bounds as to how gun owners can be held responsible for others’ fatal actions and set a new precedent for how mass shooters’ parents — and other actors — are held accountable.
A landmark case
Before Jennifer Crumbley’s case, never before had a parent…
