A teacher who was injured in the Oxford High School shooting has filed a lawsuit against the district and five former school officials.
Molly Darnell filed the lawsuit against the Oxford Community School District Tuesday for “recklessly creating or exacerbating the risk of a mass shooting,” according to the suit.
This lawsuit comes nearly three years after the shooting, which killed four students and injured seven others on Nov. 30, 2021. Darnell was the only teacher shot during the attack.
Five former school officials were also named in the lawsuit, including former school counselor Shawn Hopkins and former dean of students Nicholas Ejak. These two school officials met with the shooter, Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, and his parents on the day of the attack, and decided to let him go back to class.
Tim Throne and Ken Weaver, who are both former superintendents, and Steven Wolf, the former principal, were also named in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that the school district claims that its employees “had no choice” other than to send the shooter back to class that day because they were adhering to its policy that a student couldn’t be sent home or kept in the counselor’s office “unless there was a disciplinary issue.”
“However, the truth is that school officials escalated the danger by releasing the shooter back into the school population from a place of safety and security,” according to the suit. “They did this despite knowing of the shooter’s desire to inflict harm on himself and/or others. These school officials compounded the danger to Oxford High School students and staff by releasing him from a safe zone with an unsearched backpack that contained the deadly weapon that the shooter used to carry out his suicidal or homicidal plans.”
Darnell, who decided to switch from working inside the high school to working at the Oxford Virtual Academy after the shooting, alleges that there were “warning signs of impending violence that were ignored and/or minimized by school officials.”
On Nov. 16, Wolf allegedly sent an email to Oxford parents and said, “I know I’m being redundant here, but there is absolutely no threat at the HS... large assumptions were made from a few social media posts, then the assumptions evolved into exaggerated rumors,” according to the suit.
The suit further alleges that on the day that email was sent, Throne made an announcement on the school’s public address system and told students “to stop spreading rumors and relying on information on social media and reassuring those listening that there were no threats that posed any danger to them at Oxford High School.”
The shooter’s concerning drawings on his assignment and his journal were discussed in the suit. The journal, which detailed his plans for the mass shooting, was in his backpack, which was never searched.
“At no point did Ejak or Hopkins search E.C.’s backpack or locker to determine whether E.C. was armed and dangerous and to determine whether he had immediate access to a deadly weapon he could use to harm himself or others,” the lawsuit says.
According to the lawsuit, Hopkins and Ejak should have known that the shooter posed a threat to himself and others and that not searching his backpack would increase the threat to students and staff.
“Defendant OCSD and its administrators adopted, implemented and followed an unconstitutional policy that resulted in the release of E.C. from the safety and security of the counseling office, where he was safely supervised and where his movement and actions were restricted, and returned him to class, despite knowing the he was in the throes of a mental health crisis, obsessed with guns and gun violence, had access to firearms and was determined to be a threat to himself and others,” the lawsuit says.
Due to the actions by these school officials, Darnell has suffered “terror, shock, excruciating pain, fear, trauma, severe emotional distress, scarring and disfigurement, wage loss, loss of earning capacity, and will incur future damages, including requiring ongoing mental health counseling,” according to the suit.
The shooter was sentenced to life in prison without parole in December 2023, and his parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were sentenced to 10-15 years in prison, becoming the first parents in the U.S. to be held criminally responsible for a mass shooting carried out by their child.
This lawsuit comes after the families of the Oxford High School shooting demanded a state-led investigation into the shooting, and a judge clearing the way for a nearly $55 million payout for victims. In a separate lawsuit the school district filed against its insurance company, a judge ruled that each bullet that was fired and struck someone during the shooting is an individual occurrence, meaning that each victim that was injured should get $5 million.
Oxford Molly Darnell Sues District by snpowers on Scribd
