SOUTHFIELD, Michigan: The parents of a 17-year-old girl who was shot in the neck at Oxford High School during a mass shooting that left four students dead filed a pair of lawsuits seeking $100 million each against a Michigan school district, saying Thursday that the violence could have been prevented.
The lawsuits were filed in federal court in Detroit and Oakland County Circuit Court by Jeffrey and Brandi Franz on behalf of their daughters, Riley, a senior who was wounded Nov. 30, and her sister Bella, a 14-year-old ninth grader who was next to her at the time she was shot, attorney Geoffrey Fieger said.
The parents attended a news conference Thursday with Fieger in his Southfield offices. Jeffrey Franz appeared stoic, staring ahead as the personal injury lawyer accused school officials and staff at Oxford High of not doing enough to prevent the shooting and protect students.
Brandi Franz sat, often with head bowed. The parents did not address reporters.
The lawsuits are the first known civil suits filed in connection with the shooting. Named in the suits are the Oxford school district, Superintendent Tim Throne, Oxford High School principal Steven Wolf, two counselors, two teachers and a staff member.
Ten students and a teacher were shot at the school in Oxford Township, roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Detroit.
Ethan Crumbley, a 15-year-old sophomore at the school, was arrested at the school and has been charged as an adult with murder, terrorism and other crimes. His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, later were charged with involuntary manslaughter and arrested.
Personal-injury lawyers have expressed doubt that the school district could be successfully sued for letting Crumbley stay in school. That’s because Michigan law sets a high bar to wring liability out of public schools and other arms of government.
“You have to show that the administration or faculty members were grossly negligent, meaning they had a reckless disregard for whether an injury was likely to take place,” said attorney A. Vince Colella.
Fieger acknowledged Thursday that state law makes it difficult to successfully sue public bodies like school districts. He said a federal lawsuit allows him to subpoena the school district for records and evidence connected to Crumbley and the shooting.
“I understand that this is not going to be easy,” Fieger said. “However, now is the time to do something about it.”
The gun used in the shooting was bought days before by James Crumbley and their son had full access to it, prosecutors said.
The morning before the shooting school officials met with Ethan Crumbley and his parents after a teacher found a drawing of a gun, a bullet and a person who appeared to have been shot, along with messages stating “My life is useless” and “The world is dead.”
The Crumbleys “flatly refused” to take their son home, Throne has said.
The Franz family lives in Leonard, just northwest of Oxford. One of the lawsuits criticized school officials for not expelling, disciplining or searching Crumbley prior to the shooting which allowed Crumbley to return to his classroom “and carry out his murderous rampage.”
The lawsuit alleges civil rights violations under the 14th Amendment and also said the school district “knew or should have known that the policies, procedures, training supervision and discipline” staff members named in the suit “were inadequate for the tasks that each defendant was required to perform.”
“There’s a responsibility that our society shares in protecting our children,” Fieger said. “There is a responsibility among teachers, counselors and school administrators who could easily have prevented and stopped this slaughter.”
Riley Franz was hospitalized following the shooting. She now is recovering at home, Fieger said.
A 17-year-old student — the remaining victim hospitalized from the shooting — was removed Thursday from an intensive care unit, the Oakland County sheriff’s office said.
She was moved to a standard room and was expected to remain in a hospital for the next four to six weeks while undergoing rehabilitation.
On Wednesday, a statement posted on the district’s website by Throne said that after all the facts have been obtained and released through the course of the prosecution, he will recommend to the Oxford Board of Education that the district initiate a review of its entire system “as other communities have done when facing similar experiences.”
“Our goal with all of this is to bring together all of the facts of what happened before, during and after this horrific incident,” he wrote. “We are committed to doing this in a way that allows our community to move forward and does not re-traumatize our community members, who are reeling and suffering from this horrible event.”
The criminal cases against Ethan Crumbley and his parents are being overseen by the Oakland County prosecutor’s office, and Michigan’s attorney general said Tuesday her office will review events that occurred before the mass shooting, despite the district’s rejection of her offer to be its third-party investigator.
The district’s lawyer told the attorney general’s office Monday it was fully cooperating with local law enforcement.
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Michigan school district faces two $100m suits after Oxford shootings
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Michigan school district faces two $100m suits after Oxford shootings
’Weak by design’ African Union gathers for summit
ADDIS ABABA: The African Union (AU) holds its annual summit in Ethiopia this weekend at a time of genocide, myriad insurgencies and coups stretching from one end of the continent to the other, for which it has few answers.
The AU, formed in 2002, has 55 member states who are often on opposing sides of conflicts. They have routinely blocked attempts to hand real enforcement power to the AU that could constrain their action, leaving it under-funded and under-equipped.
It has missed successive deadlines to make itself self-funding — in 2020 and 2025. Today, it still relies for 64 percent of its annual budget on the United States and European Union, who are cutting back support.
Its chairman, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, is reduced to expressing “deep concern” over the continent’s endless crises — from wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to insurgencies across the Sahel — but with limited scope to act.
“At a time when the AU is needed the most, it is arguably at its weakest since it was inaugurated,” said the International Crisis Group (ICG) in a recent report.
- Ignoring own rules -
With 10 military coups in Africa since 2020, the AU has been forced to ignore the rule in its charter that coup-leaders must not stand for elections. Gabon and Guinea, suspended after their coups, were reinstated this past year despite breaking that rule.
Meanwhile, there has been no “deep concern” over a string of elections marred by rigging and extreme violence.
Youssouf was quick to congratulate Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan after she won 98 percent in a vote in October in which all leading opponents were barred or jailed and thousands of protesters were killed by security forces.
The AU praised the “openness” of an election in Burundi in June described by Human Rights Watch as “dominated by repression (and) censorship.”
The problem, said Benjamin Auge, of the French Institute of International Relations, is that few African leaders care about how they are viewed abroad as they did in the early days after independence.
“There are no longer many presidents with pan-African ambitions,” he told AFP.
“Most of the continent’s leaders are only interested in their internal problems. They certainly don’t want the AU to interfere in domestic matters,” he added.
- AU ‘supports dialogue’ -
AU representatives point out that its work stretches far beyond conflict, with bodies doing valuable work on health, development, trade and much more.
Spokesman Nuur Mohamud Sheekh told AFP that its peace efforts went unnoticed because they were measured in conflicts that were prevented.
“The AU has helped de-escalate political tensions and support dialogue before situations descend into violence,” he said, citing the work done to prevent war between Sudan and South Sudan over the flashpoint region of Abyei.
But African states show little interest in building up an organization that might constrain them.
Power remains instead with the AU Assembly, made up of individual heads of state, including the three longest-ruling non-royals in the world: Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea (46 years), Paul Biya of Cameroon (44) and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (40).
“The African Union is weak because its members want it that way,” wrote two academics for The Conversation last year.
This weekend, the rotating presidency of the AU assembly passes to Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye, fresh from his party’s 97-percent election victory.
Coups, conflicts and rights abuses may get discussed, but the main theme is water sanitation.
The AU, formed in 2002, has 55 member states who are often on opposing sides of conflicts. They have routinely blocked attempts to hand real enforcement power to the AU that could constrain their action, leaving it under-funded and under-equipped.
It has missed successive deadlines to make itself self-funding — in 2020 and 2025. Today, it still relies for 64 percent of its annual budget on the United States and European Union, who are cutting back support.
Its chairman, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, is reduced to expressing “deep concern” over the continent’s endless crises — from wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to insurgencies across the Sahel — but with limited scope to act.
“At a time when the AU is needed the most, it is arguably at its weakest since it was inaugurated,” said the International Crisis Group (ICG) in a recent report.
- Ignoring own rules -
With 10 military coups in Africa since 2020, the AU has been forced to ignore the rule in its charter that coup-leaders must not stand for elections. Gabon and Guinea, suspended after their coups, were reinstated this past year despite breaking that rule.
Meanwhile, there has been no “deep concern” over a string of elections marred by rigging and extreme violence.
Youssouf was quick to congratulate Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan after she won 98 percent in a vote in October in which all leading opponents were barred or jailed and thousands of protesters were killed by security forces.
The AU praised the “openness” of an election in Burundi in June described by Human Rights Watch as “dominated by repression (and) censorship.”
The problem, said Benjamin Auge, of the French Institute of International Relations, is that few African leaders care about how they are viewed abroad as they did in the early days after independence.
“There are no longer many presidents with pan-African ambitions,” he told AFP.
“Most of the continent’s leaders are only interested in their internal problems. They certainly don’t want the AU to interfere in domestic matters,” he added.
- AU ‘supports dialogue’ -
AU representatives point out that its work stretches far beyond conflict, with bodies doing valuable work on health, development, trade and much more.
Spokesman Nuur Mohamud Sheekh told AFP that its peace efforts went unnoticed because they were measured in conflicts that were prevented.
“The AU has helped de-escalate political tensions and support dialogue before situations descend into violence,” he said, citing the work done to prevent war between Sudan and South Sudan over the flashpoint region of Abyei.
But African states show little interest in building up an organization that might constrain them.
Power remains instead with the AU Assembly, made up of individual heads of state, including the three longest-ruling non-royals in the world: Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea (46 years), Paul Biya of Cameroon (44) and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (40).
“The African Union is weak because its members want it that way,” wrote two academics for The Conversation last year.
This weekend, the rotating presidency of the AU assembly passes to Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye, fresh from his party’s 97-percent election victory.
Coups, conflicts and rights abuses may get discussed, but the main theme is water sanitation.
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