OAKLAND COUNTY, Mich. — The family of a student injured late last month in a mass shooting at Oxford High School has filed suit against the school district and school officials, saying that they made students more vulnerable by dismissing threats that circulated on social media in the days before the deadly attack.
Attorney Geoffrey Fieger said he filed the $100 million lawsuit against the Oxford Community School District and school employees on behalf of the parents of Riley Franz, a 17-year-old senior and honor roll student who suffered a gunshot wound to the neck, and Bella Franz, a 14-year-old freshman and star athlete who was next to her sister during the shooting.
“This should have been a time in which they’re preparing to go on Christmas vacation. They were leaving on Dec. 25,” Fieger said Thursday at a news conference. “Instead, Riley’s spending her time convalescing and packing ... a neck wound that less than 2% of people who suffer that wound survive, and Bella has been literally traumatized as if she were suffering in a war zone.”
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The attorney said he filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of the Franz family “alleging that the counselors, the teachers (and) the school administrators who failed the students at Oxford High School at virtually every turn therefore violated the civil rights of the Oxford High School students who were injured and killed during this slaughter.
“The law doesn’t allow us to prosecute and put anymore people in jail, that’s the prosecutor’s job. The law only allows us one outlet, and that is to make it so costly that it hurts in the pocketbook so that they might not do it again.”
In court records, attorneys said parents contacted Oxford High School’s principal, Steven Wolf, two weeks before the shooting with concerns about threats made against Oxford High School students. On Nov. 16, Wolf emailed parents to say, “there is absolutely no threat at the (high school),” according to the lawsuit.
After Wolf exchanged emails with parents, attorneys said Oxford Community School District Superintendent Timothy Throne made an announcement to students by loudspeaker telling them “to stop spreading information over social media and to stop relying on information on social media, reiterating that there were no threats that posed any danger to students at Oxford High School.”
Attorneys for the Franz family said the announcement “substantially increased the harm” to students, including Riley and Bella, as Throne knew or should have known “that his announcement to the students at Oxford High School would discourage the students and/or their parents from reporting credible threats of bodily harm to teachers, counselors and staff of Oxford High School.”
One day before the shooting, a teacher reported 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley to a school counselor after catching him searching for ammunition on his cellphone, according to the lawsuit. The teacher did not tell the school safety liaison officer about the incident and officials allowed Crumbley to return to class despite the recent threats to students, attorneys said.
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That night, attorneys said Crumbley updated his biography on his Twitter account to say, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. See you tomorrow Oxford.”
“Ethan Crumbley returned to school the next day unchained,” according to the lawsuit. Attorneys said school and school district officials “knowingly and deliberately allowed the murder student to return to school the next day, despite the clear and present dangers he posed to students at Oxford High School.”
Ten students were among the 11 people shot Nov. 30 after authorities said a fellow student opened fire indiscriminately at Oxford High School. Four students between the ages of 14 and 17 died of their injuries.
Crumbley, a sophomore at Oxford High School, has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of assault with the intent to murder and 12 counts of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony in connection to the shooting. His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, also face four counts each of involuntary manslaughter.
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