PONTIAC (WWJ) — As James Crumbley was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in connection with his son’s murders in the November 2021 Oxford High School shooting, the jury foreperson read each of the four guilty counts one by one, for each of the four victims:
Madisyn Baldwin, Justin Shilling, Tate Myre and Hana St. Juliana.
One by one, parents of the victims spoke at a press conference held Thursday night by Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, thanking the prosecution and law enforcement for their work on the case.
Each parent also said more needs to be done about the problem of gun violence in the U.S., which has become the No. 1 killer of American children.
Steve St. Juliana, the father of the youngest Oxford victim, 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana, while thankful for the prosecutors and police, said “we’re not done.”
“As Ms. McDonald said, these are just the beginning steps. There is so much more that absolutely must be done,” he said. “It’s crazy the way that our society is currently reacting to this. Our children are dying on a daily basis in mass murders and we do very little about it.”
St. Juliana said there are endless excuses and hopes people can “wake up and take action.”
“We complain about 2nd Amendment rights, or we say, ‘oh there’s not enough money for mental health issues.’ You name it, there’ll be an argument against it. It’s the No. 1 killer of our kids, folks. We can put people on the moon, we can build skyscrapers, huge monuments like the Hoover Dam, and we can’t keep our kids safe in schools,” he said.
Buck Myre, father of 16-year-old Tate, called the problem of gun violence “a deep issue,” one that won’t be easy to solve.
"And it’s more than the gun. Our kids are not doing well these days. We're at a mental health crisis. So, the gun is just a tool, so we've got to look at other things other than the gun. We've got to see what we can do to support these kids better,” Myre said
Nicole Beausoleil, mother of 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin, thanked the three families of the other victims who stood together during the trial.
“This has been a really hard road and the friendships that I’ve made with these families are friendships that I wish I didn’t have to make the way I did, but these people are some of my best friends and I thank them more than they will ever know,” Beausoleil said.
While 17-year-old Justin Shilling’s father, Craig Shilling, called the verdict “monumental,” he said moving forward “it’s very important as a society to set the right example for our children and future generations” by enacting change when it comes to gun violence.
McDonald called gun violence a “public health crisis,” saying we can’t address it until it is treated as such.
“Yes, access to guns is a critical piece of that, but it's not the only piece. We have to focus on prevention,” she said. "So I refuse to take a victory lap with these prosecutions. It will not bring back these kids. We have a lot more work to do."