The sentencing of Ethan Crumbley’s parents brought thoughtful criticism from a Columbine school shooting survivor.
Craig Scott discussed the historic decision to punish Jennifer and James Crumbley with “Fox & Friends”, saying it is “a bad and dangerous precedent.”
“I think that it removes responsibility out of the hands of this teenager,” Scott said. “I speak at a lot of schools across the country and deal with emotional resilience and try to affect cultures of schools and students’ lives by inspiring kindness and resilience, and I think this is a bad and dangerous precedent to take the blame of a teenager who knew what he was doing was wrong. He had a dark motivation for wanting to be infamous. And now they’re giving 10 to 15 years to the parents… and I think it’s wrong.”
Scott, who lost his sister Rachel to the Columbine shooting, took issue with taking the responsibility away from Ethan Crumbley for his horrific actions.
“This teenager admitted in court that he lied a lot. He was lying to his parents, he was lying to everyone around him. Ultimately, it was his decision that he was making, and he knew what he was doing was wrong,” he explained. “Yes, I think it will make parents more cautious, but there’s all kinds of people that could be opened up to being attacked for someone else’s decisions.”
He revealed that the the mother of one of the Columbine shooters is actually a friend of his family now, describing her as a ” wonderful person.”
“She was a special education teacher, a wonderful person, and she had no idea [the shooting would happen]. She saw the depression. She saw the mental health issues. She saw the volatile anger issues, but she could have never predicted what her son was going to do,” Scott shared.
Scott reasoned that if the Crumbleys had known of their son’s serious mental health issues, they would have never purchased a firearm for him, though many argue that the parents were so uninvolved in their son’s life that they missed the opportunity to see the warning signs.
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Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.
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