A Wisconsin father is facing possible jail time after prosecutors charged him over a school shooting carried out by his 15-year-old daughter, marking the third time in recent years that an American parent has been taken to court for violence committed by their child.
Jeffrey Rupnow, 44, told investigators he bought his daughter Natalie a Glock handgun as a way to bond with her after she struggled following her parents' divorce in 2022. Natalie used the weapon to kill a teacher and a fellow student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2024 before killing herself.
Rupnow faces two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to someone under 18 and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. His case is still pending in Madison. Unlike the two other cases described below, Rupnow had put his daughter through a gun safety course and kept the family's weapons in a safe, though he had hinted to her at the combination code.
The Crumbley case in Michigan
The trend of prosecuting parents began in 2021, after 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley opened fire at Oxford High School in Michigan, killing four students and injuring six others and a teacher. His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, had given him the semi-automatic pistol for Christmas and left it unlocked, according to prosecutors.
The day before the shooting, a teacher caught Ethan searching online for ammunition on his phone and reported it. School officials left voice and email messages for Jennifer, who did not respond but texted Ethan directly, joking, "Lol. I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught."
On the morning of the shooting, a teacher found a drawing on Ethan's desk showing a handgun and a bleeding figure, along with the phrases "My life is useless," "the world is dead," "blood everywhere," and "the thoughts won't stop, help me." The Crumbleys were called to meet a school counselor and told to get Ethan into counseling within 48 hours, but when they said they needed to get to work, the counselor allowed him to stay in school the rest of the day.
Once the shooting began, Jennifer texted "Ethan. Don't do it." She later testified she sent the message fearing he would kill himself, not because she knew he was harming others.
Within days, local district attorney Karen McDonald charged both Crumbley parents with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each victim, for failing to intervene. Legal experts doubted the charges would succeed because they broke with the long-held principle that people cannot be held criminally responsible for another person's actions unless they shared the intent to kill.
A jury convicted both parents, making them the first parents in U.S. history convicted over a mass shooting carried out by their child. Ethan was sentenced to life in prison without parole, while James and Jennifer Crumbley each received 10 to 15 years, well short of the 80 years McDonald had sought.
The Gray case in Georgia
About five months after the Crumbleys' sentencing, Marcee Gray searched Google for "school shooter parents charged with manslaughter" and "safe storage gun laws in Georgia." That same day, she called her estranged husband, Colin Gray, repeatedly, urging him to secure the guns in his house from their 14-year-old son, Colt. Colin refused, later testifying that going into Colt's room to take a gun would "cause a shitstorm."
About a week later, Colt used a semi-automatic rifle his father had given him for Christmas to open fire at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, killing two students and two teachers and injuring nine others.
Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith prosecuted both Colt, who pleaded guilty to all counts and was sentenced to life in prison, and his father for ignoring warning signs. More than a year before the shooting, deputies had visited the family home after anonymous online threats to "shoot up a school" were traced to Colt, who had built a shrine to the Parkland, Florida, school shooter in his bedroom.
The judge in the case said it mattered that Colin Gray did not have actual knowledge Colt was going to commit the attack, did not intentionally commit a crime, did not plan an attack and did not pull the trigger. The judge nevertheless sentenced Colin Gray to 15 years in prison for second-degree murder, a steeper conviction than the Crumbleys received, making him the first parent of a school shooter in the U.S. to serve time on that charge.
Legal experts split on the trend
Ekow Yankah, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said that once prosecutors have a new tool, they will use it, and he expects more prosecutions of parents nationally if further school shootings occur.
Robert Weisberg, a criminal law expert at Stanford Law School, said the cases could cause parents to think more deeply about responsibility and consider foreseeable risks. McDonald said the public owes it to the victims of gun violence to say enough is enough.
Other experts are skeptical. Ben McJunkin, a criminal law professor at Arizona State University, said that a couple of years ago he would have expected juries to reject charges so far outside how causation normally works in criminal law, but juries have accepted them, which he said pushes the boundaries of what it means to cause another person's death.
UCLA law professor Shirin Bakhshay said most parents do not think their children are capable of violence and tend to see them through rose-colored glasses. Nila Bala, a children's law scholar at UC Davis School of Law, warned that the threat of prosecution could push parents toward over-surveilling their children through tracking devices and close monitoring of their online lives, saying the last thing needed is bigger wedges between parents and children.
