The trial against James Crumbleythe father of the minor author of a mass shooting at a Michigan high school in 2021. Wearing the orange jumpsuit, shackled hand and foot, he enters the courtroom. His son killed four companions in cold blood and not even his obvious mental problems prevented him from being sentenced to life imprisonment. Her parents, for the first time in the US, were also accused of the crime.

The mother has just been convicted and now he, the father, is being tried. Because he was the one who bought the murder weapon from his 15-year-old son and did not keep it locked up. Both he and his mother ignored the warning from the teachers, who caught the teenager consulting on the Internet how to buy bullets.

They also did not notice the disturbing confession in his diary, where he talked about shooting up the damn school. At the trial her mother broke down in front of the victims’ family. “You wouldn’t have had to go through this if you had been a mother,” said one father.

But summum of neglect was the same day of the shooting. Hours before in class, the boy drew a sketch of the massacre. The management called the parents, who refused to take him home. Shortly afterward the killing began. The police acknowledged: “he had the gun loaded and was coming down the hallway.” Now the father faces justice, which can sentence him to 60 years in prison.