The Oxford Community School District and gun dealer Acme Shooting Goods, LLC, are being sued by the parents of a 14-year-old victim of the Oxford High School shooting in Michigan that happened last year.
Four students were killed and seven others were injured during the Nov. 30, 2021 school shooting. The 14-year-old, whose parents are suing, suffered gunshot wounds to a hand and his face. The teen was one of six students and one teacher injured in the shooting at the school, reported ABC News.
The new lawsuit was announced Wednesday afternoon by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and Sommers Schwartz, P.C. In the suit, the victim's parents, Matthew and Mary Mueller, accuse Acme of "negligently and/or unlawfully supplied the minor shooter with a firearm he could not lawfully possess." The dealer provided the gun to the shooter’s father "despite actual and/or constructive knowledge that the father was engaging in an illicit straw purchase, and that the Acme gun was intended for the shooter."
According to Fox News, it is the first lawsuit against a gun dealer that is related to the Oxford shooting. The Muellers said in a Wednesday statement that no family or community should have to experience the pain that they endured on Nov. 30, 2021, and "continue to deal with to this day." They said that both of them are teachers in the Oxford Community School District at Oxford Middle School.
They added that while they worked to keep their students as "calm and as safe as we possibly could, we were panicked, unable to reach our son." At least for 45 minutes, the couple did not know if their son was alive. The statement read that the parents next saw their son in a hospital bed. The parents said that they are bringing this suit so that the "failures both in the sale of this gun and at our school which allowed this to happen can never happen again."
The lawsuit also accuses the school district of "recklessly creating or exacerbating the risk of a mass shooting at Oxford High School." This was done through "acts showing a deliberate indifference to the safety and constitutional rights of Oxford High School students and a gun dealer choosing to negligently and unlawfully sell a firearm."
According to NPR, more than a dozen students have already filed a similar federal lawsuits against the school district as well as some of the employees of the school.
Shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley, a teenager, is accused of using his father's gun to fatally shoot multiple victims inside the Oxford High School building. Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said in December that James Crumbley, the boy's father, allegedly purchased the weapon at Acme on Nov. 26, and Ethan had access to it at home.
