(Source: MIRS.news, Published 10/31/2023) A third-party report conducted on the Oxford shootings in 2021 suggested that lawmakers ban insurers from denying or threatening to deny coverage to school employees who voluntarily cooperate in any investigation.
The recommendation comes after Guidepost Solutions reported that 34 of the 40 teachers who taught convicted shooter, Ethan Crumbley, during his school years, refused to cooperate with investigators, did not respond to investigators or said they had nothing to share.
“In seeking cooperation, it became apparent that the District and certain employees were concerned about risking their insurance coverage by conducting or cooperating with the investigation,” the report noted in a footnote.
“The Michigan Legislature may consider enacting legislation preventing insurers from denying, or threatening to deny coverage, indemnification or advancement to public schools and their employees if they voluntarily cooperate with or participate in independent investigations with public reporting related to school shootings,” the footnote added.
Critical witnesses, including teachers Allison Karpinski, Jacquelyn Kubina, Becky Morgan as well as Counselor Shawn Hopkins and Dean of Students Nick Ejak, who had knowledge of key events of what happened on Nov. 29-30, 2021, also declined to cooperate after the district’s civil law firm, Giarmarco, Mullins & Horton (GMH), advised district employees “not to speak” with investigators, according to the report.
Pamela Fine, the district’s restorative practices/bullying prevention coordinator, was the only key witness to cooperate, the report noted.
“To Fine’s credit, she cooperated with us despite pressure not to do so,” the report reads. “GMH further advised attorneys and representatives of the teachers’ union that their members should not participate in interviews. Union attorneys, in turn, advised their members not to participate in the investigation.”
Other Oakland Community Schools’ employees who didn’t play a key role in the events that culminated in the shooting requested confidentiality when speaking to investigators.
The Shooting
Crumbley, then 15, plotted the killing spree in a journal and used a Sig Sauer 9 mm semi-automatic handgun that his parents gave him as a Christmas present to carry out his plan.
Four students – Hana St. Juliana, 14; Tate Myre, 16; and Madisyn Baldwin and Justin Shilling, both 17 – were killed and seven others, including a teacher, were injured in the shooting.
Crumbley’s parents are also charged in connection with the shooting.
Other Findings
The report’s authors noted that blame is correctly placed on the shooter, “who killed intentionally, and his parents, who recklessly supplied him with the instrument with which to do it,” but they noted their “investigation has revealed that had proper threat assessment guidelines been in place and District threat assessment policy followed, this tragedy was avoidable.”
The report laid blame for the shooting on then-Superintendent Tim Throne as well as former assistant superintendents for students services Jill Lemond and Denise Sweat, whom Guidepost said was responsible for creating and carrying out an appropriate threat assessment and suicide intervention process.
“We believe that the District’s senior administration bears the most significant responsibility for the District’s failure to implement an appropriate threat assessment and suicide intervention process,” according to the report.
Throne and the assistant superintendents failed in five principal ways, according to the report, including failing to properly communicate threat assessment policy to building-level administrators; failing to adopt threat assessment administrative guidelines; and failing to ensure that there were trained threat assessment teams in place at each school.
Investigators said Sweat, who left the district in January 2021, refused to speak with them while Lemond spoke with investigators, but denied responsibility for overseeing the threat assessment policy.
“In fact, Lemond claimed that she was not responsible for threat assessment even though she prepared a grant application on threat assessments in the spring of 2021,” the report noted.
"None of the assistant superintendents in the central office as of November 30, 2021, who we interviewed accepted responsibility for threat assessment,” the report reads. “That no cabinet-level administrator accepted responsibility for ensuring that the district's threat assessment policy was being implemented correctly is a serious breakdown."
