Michigan teen Ethan Crumbley went on a shooting spree back in November of last year at Oxford High School. His crimes led to the deaths of four students and the injury of seven others.
The 15-year-old made journal entries that were made public on Wednesday. In those writings, he set out a “detailed plan” for the shooting and mimicked the statements of former President Trump:
Hopefully my shooting will cause Biden to get impeached. Sleepy f*cking Joe Biden will have to make an apolg(y) to people.
“Sleepy” Joe Biden is what Trump has called Biden a number of times in the past.
Ethan’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, are now also facing charges of involuntary manslaughter for failing to secure the weapon that their son used to commit the act.
They are arguing against the admission of the journal on the grounds that it could turn the trial into something political. They worry that it could cause jurors who support President Biden to side against them.
Lawyers for the couple told the court,
The materials risk the danger of turning jury deliberations into a political debate. It would also be likely to lead to longer deliberations and possibly an endless string of hung juries, as the likelihood that all jurors would have the same attitude about the anti-Biden diatribe of (Ethan) is surely close to zero.
But the boy’s mother herself wrote an open letter back in 2016 thanking Trump for supporting gun rights and excusing all of the bad things he’d been accused of already:
You made the famous ‘grab them in the p*ssy’ comment, did it offend me? No.”I say things all the time that people take the wrong way, do I mean them, not always. Do I agree that you should of [sic] shown your tax returns? No. I don’t care what you do or maybe don’t pay in taxes, I think those are personal and if the Gov’t can lock someone up over $10,000 of unpaid taxes and you slipped on by, then that shows the corruption.
As for Ethan himself, other entries show not only his politics, but his racism and sexism as well. In addition to various racial slurs, in one entry, he says, “The first victim has to be a pretty girl with a future so she can suffer just like me. I will cause the biggest school shooting in Michigan’s history. I will kill everyone I f*cking see. I have fully mentally lost it after years of fighting my dark side. My parents won’t listen to me about help or a therapist.”
The after-effects of the Trump presidency will continue to be felt for years, apparently.