4 years after Oxford school shooting, families still await answers from state

This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.

Four years after a mass shooting at Oxford High School, Steve St. Juliana is still searching for answers.

His daughter, Hana, was one of four students killed on November 30, 2021, when a 15-year-old student opened fire inside the school in Oxford Township, Michigan. The shooter was later sentenced to life in prison. His parents, Jennifer and James Crumbley, were charged with involuntary manslaughter, an unprecedented move, and each was sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.

Over the last several years, St. Juliana has pressed state and local officials to investigate how the risk posed by the shooter went undetected. His efforts were often met with delays or shifting explanations.

“Every time they told us there was a reason they couldn’t do it, we tackled it head-on and tried to get rid of that rationale,” St. Juliana told The Trace. He said officials repeatedly cited shifting obstacles, including questions of authority, ongoing litigation, and funding, as reasons an investigation could not move forward.

It wasn’t until after a November 2024 press conference organized by St. Juliana and other victims’ family members that the Michigan Attorney General’s Office agreed to conduct a state investigation. A couple of months later, St. Juliana met with Attorney General Dana Nessel. He was told the office needed six months to review existing materials and secure funding before launching its probe. That put the investigation’s expected start date around July 2025.

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Since then, Nessel’s office has provided no public update, leaving families still waiting for clarity about whether the investigation ever began. Although Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer proposed $1 million in the state budget last year to fund the investigation, the money was not included in the final 2026 budget, deepening uncertainty for families who say they’ve received no explanation for the delay. St. Juliana doesn’t believe there should be any financial holdup preventing the AG’s office from conducting its own investigation.

“I think that’s an excuse. The AG’s overall budget is over $100 million,” St. Juliana said. “There was already an independent investigation done that did 90 percent of the work. What we need the AG’s office to do is validate it.”

Kimberly Bush, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office, said in a statement to The Trace that investigators had to start from scratch in reviewing the case. Bush said the office received a large amount of materials, but did not obtain key files until late November, and is still waiting for additional documents that were expected to be provided by Guidepost Solutions, a private global security and investigative firm.

“We recognize that for the families and community of Oxford this has been a years-long process, but as a new team reviewing this for the first time, it’s integral that our work strictly follows best practices and does not cut corners or take short cuts,” Bush said in the statement.

“Our review remains ongoing in earnest.”

The independent investigation was conducted by Guidepost. The inquiry, which was led by former federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials, found that the shooting was preventable if top administrators had carried out proper threat assessment interventions and followed safety protocols. The report also detailed how delays and resistance from school leaders obstructed the investigation, contributing to years of mistrust among families seeking accountability. Similar probes followed mass shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in 2018, Sandy Hook in 2012, and Virginia Tech in 2007, though each was conducted by state or government agencies rather than independent investigators.

“There’s a lot of things that should have been acknowledged up front, lessons learned that we could share with other schools across the state and across the country,” said Danielle Krozeck, an Oxford parent whose family is close to St. Juliana’s. “That is what we should be doing, sharing everything that went wrong.”

In the aftermath of the shooting, accountability efforts became entangled in years of legal maneuvering. The Oxford School Board initially declined multiple offers from the state Attorney General’s Office to conduct an investigation, citing ongoing criminal and civil litigation. It wasn’t until May 2022 that the district approved an independent review by Guidepost.

Even though that review faulted school officials for multiple failures and concluded that the shooting was preventable, the Michigan Supreme Court declined to hear arguments that the school district had failed to protect the students.

“The system has done everything in its power to protect the status quo,” St. Juliana said.

St. Juliana says he and other family members aren’t searching for some hidden revelation or new piece of information. What they want is a clear accounting of what went wrong.

“The absolute necessity is to establish what lessons we’ve learned,” he said. “Because when this happens again, hopefully the state will actually do something about it.”

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