A former neighbor of Jennifer and James Crumbley and their son Ethan once made an anonymous complaint to Michigan’s Children’s Protective Services because the parents frequently left their young son home alone while they went out drinking.
Kayla LeMieux told the Detroit Free Press the incidents took place in 2014 and 2015, when the Crumbleys lived in Lake Orion, a town about three miles south of Oxford where last weeks high school shooting massacre took place. Ethan, now 15, would have been 8 or 9, she said.
“When they were gone, he would come knock on our door,” LeMieux said. “They didn’t leave him with a phone.”
He would ask his neighbor to call his parents.
LeMieux and the Crumbleys lived in the same townhome complex near downtown Lake Orion, she said. She said she had considered Jennifer a friend, and the two worked together as restaurant servers in 2012. But, LeMieux said, he concern about Ethan pushed them apart.
“It was really when I finally started to say more, because I was just like, even after calling CPS, they were still doing it and even me saying something to them, they were still like ‘Oh he is fine,’” she said.
LeMieux showed the Free Press Facebook Messenger conversations she said were with the Crumbleys in 2015 in which she mentions the couple leaving their son alone while they were out drinking. The Crumbley accounts appear to have been deleted, the paper said.
LeMieux said she didn’t know if CPS took any action after her phone call, and state officials wouldn’t comment when the Free Press reached out. The Crumbleys’ attorneys did not respond to requests for comment either.
Ethan Crumbley is accused of killing four Oxford High students and wounding six more and a teach in last week’s mass shooting. He is being held without bond. His parents have been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter for allegedly buying the gun the teen used in the shooting and leaving it within easy access and for failing to take action regarding their son’s behavior in the days leading up to the shooting. They are being held on a $500,000 bond each.
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