Lawyers for a Michigan high school student injured in a deadly mass shooting are accusing the district of destroying evidence pertinent to the case.
Four people were killed last month and seven injured after Ethan Crumbley, a 15-year-old sophomore, allegedly opened fire at Oxford High School.
The Oxford School District is currently facing a $100 million lawsuit from a student who was shot in the neck, and her sister, who witnessed the attack. Lawyers say the district has scrubbed the school website of administrators.
“Not only did defendants fail to take necessary steps to preserve the evidence, but they willfully destructed the evidence by deleting the webpages and social media accounts,” attorney Nora Hanna wrote in Friday’s filing, the Detroit Free Press reported. “Plaintiffs cannot continue to be blindsided by the defendants by having to search for what evidence is being destroyed or altered.”
Jeffrey Franz and his wife Brandi are suing Oxford School District after their daughter, Riley, was shot in the neck by alleged gunman Ethan Crumbley. David Guralnick/Detroit News via APThe lawsuit was filed Thursday and alleges the school failed to protect students from a peer who was “deranged” and “homicidal.” US District Judge Terrence Berg has ordered the school to keep all evidence related to the case.
Photos of Oxford high school shooting victims Hana St. Juliana, Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre and Justin Shilling are laid in a memorial site in Oxford, Michigan on Dec. 7, 2021. Jake May/The Flint Journal via APTimothy J. Mullins, an attorney for the Oxford school district, disputed the accusation.
“It’s a lie … it’s disgusting,” he told the paper. “People think that the school district is withholding information? Everything that we have has been given to the prosecutor … everything they want we’ve given to them.”
