After the mother, the father of a teenager who shot four students at a school in the US state of Michigan in 2021 has now been found guilty of negligent homicide. A jury announced its verdict in Pontiac, Michigan, on Thursday evening (local time). A few weeks earlier, the teenager’s mother had also been convicted of four counts of negligent homicide. It was the first time in the United States that a parent of a shooter was convicted on grounds of personal responsibility for such a crime. The murder weapon was a gift from his parents to their then 15-year-old son, which he used to commit the murders shortly afterwards. Both parents now face 15 years in prison – the sentence will not be announced until a later date.
After the crime, serious allegations were made against the teenager’s parents because they had bought the murder weapon and given their underage son access to it. They are also said to have ignored warnings from the boy’s school environment. The father’s defense argued during the trial that their client had no idea what his son was planning.
The parents were brought before court in separate proceedings. The son had pleaded guilty to all 24 charges. Last year he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He did not testify in the trials against his parents.
The case once again brought the question of parents’ responsibility for their children’s actions into focus. Although fathers and mothers have sometimes been held responsible for negligent behavior in the past, this case marked the first time that parents of an underage shooter were found guilty of negligent homicide.
