OXFORD, Mich. (WWJ) -- In a video message released Thursday night, Oxford Community Schools Superintendent Tim Throne addressed Tuesday’s shooting at the school that left four students dead, seven people wounded and a community in mourning.
Throne said the school was a wreck and described it as “a war zone.” He said it will be weeks before the school is ready to be reopened.
The video can be viewed below.
Throne addressed the reported meeting between suspect Ethan Crumbley, his parents and school administrators on Tuesday, confirming he was called to the office, but based on information they had, "no discipline was warranted."
Throne noted "there are no discipline records at the high school."
The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office revealed earlier this week that Crumbley and his parents met with administrators around 10 a.m. on Tuesday, about three hours before the deadly shooting, to discuss “concerning behavior” in the classroom.
Crumbley met administrators without his parents the day prior to the shooting.
Officials have still not disclosed what those meetings entailed and Throne said in Thursday’s video he would “take any and all questions at a later time, but that’s not now.”
“This is as much info as we can give you today,” he said.
"To say that I'm still in shock and numb would probably be an understatement," Throne said in the video
“No matter who has contacted me from the beginning of this whole mess, it seems like I’m asked over and over, ‘what is it that I would like, what is it that people could provide?” Throne said in the video. “And I think I’ll continue to keep saying the same answer -- and that’s ‘time.’”
“I’m asking for time to allow you and your sons and daughters to process this, to mourn and grieve,” he said.
Throne said he was going to meet Thursday night with parents of the four students who were killed in the shooting.
Throne had not spoken with media since Tuesday afternoon as the scene was still developing. "I'm shocked. It's devastating," he said at the time.
He said in Thursday's video, "I apologize that I'm coming to you in this way, but we felt this was probably the most expedient way to communicate with our parents and our families and our community, so that's how we're going about this."
“I apologized to our staff today that we haven’t been communicating sooner, and that’s OK,” he said. “That’s OK, because in this instance, we have to go by the book and we simply cannot communicate things until others have communicated things.”
Throne said he was going to talk with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Thursday night and ask them to on Friday “release whatever video that they feel comfortable with releasing.”
He said he wanted parents to be as proud of what their children did during Tuesday's chaos as he was.
The superintended applauded both students and staff members for helping one another amid the chaos.
"I could not be more proud of our staff, our teachers, our administration. We had administrators performing CPR," he said. "Our students did exactly as they had trained. While we had hoped that never in a million years we would have to pull this game plan out, we did, and I couldn't be more proud."
A school spokesperson released the following message with the video on Thursday night:
"We know many of you have reached out for interviews and comment regarding the recent tragic event in our Oxford community. As you can imagine, our team has needed to put 100% of our efforts into our traumatized students, staff, and families. While we have been advised not to speak with media amidst the ongoing police investigation, we do want to share with you a video message from Superintendent Throne: https://youtu.be/2wHd8nN4tXw that was sent to our families this evening."
Stay tuned to WWJ Newsradio 950 for the latest details on this developing story. >>> LISTEN LIVE!
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