Oxford High School teacher injured in mass shooting sues district, several ex-school officials

(CBS DETROIT)A teacher hurt in the shooting at Oxford High School in 2021 has sued the district and a number of past administrators.

Ethan Crumbley killed Justin Shilling, 17, Madisyn Baldwin, 17, Tate Myre, 16, and Hana St. Juliana, 14 in a mass shooting on November 30. Molly Darnell was the only adult and Oxford school employee shot by Crumbley. Darnell was one of seven people hurt in the shooting.

Darnell was shot in the left shoulder and had to use her cardigan as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. She gave moving testimony at the shooter’s Miller Hearing in July 2023 and the manslaughter trials of the shooter’s parents, Jennifer and James Crumbley, in January and March 2024.

The Oxford Community School District and five workers who worked for the district at the time of the shooting are named as defendants in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan:

According to the lawsuit, the school system and its administration were obligated to safeguard children and staff against predictable dangers, such as a mass shooting.

“It was eminently foreseeable that an act of gun violence like the mass shooting was a probable consequence of their negligent and/or unlawful misconduct,” according to the lawsuit filed by Darnell, an instructional coordinator for the district. Therefore, the injury done to different Oxford High School students and personnel was directly and proximally caused by the careless and/or illegal behavior of OCSD.

In their testimony in the Crumbleys’ trial, Hopkins and Ejak stated that they spoke with the shooter and his parents on the day of the shooting and that they were forced to send him back to class because they were unable to remove him absent a disciplinary matter.

“However, the truth is that school officials escalated the danger by releasing the shooter back into the school population from aplace of safety and security,” the complaint claims. “They took this action even though they were aware that the shooter intended to injure himself and/or other people. By releasing him from a safe area with an unsearched backpack that held the lethal weapon the shooter used to carry out his suicidal or homicidal plans, these school officials increased the risk to Oxford High School students and staff.

The complaint alleges that due to “Ejak’s and Hopkins’s deliberate indifference,” Darnell experienced “terror, shock, excruciating pain, fear, trauma, severe emotional distress, scarring and disfigurement, wage loss, loss of earning capacity, and will incur future damages, including requiring ongoing mental health counseling.”

Darnell is the first employee of the Oxford school district to sue. Previously, the district was the target of civil litigation from the families whose children were hurt in the shooting and those whose children died.

The gunman received a life sentence without the chance of release in December 2023, while his parents were found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 10–15 years in prison in April.

The Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office said on November 21 that it was collaborating with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on the shooting investigation.

Joe Buczek works for CBS Detroit as the manager of digital content and promotion. The Leader and the Kalkaskian, the Oakland Press, the Morning Sun, the Grand Traverse Insider, and WWTV were among his prior employers.

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