PONTIAC, Mich. (WXYZ) — Testimony continued Friday morning in the trial of Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the Oxford High School shooter. It's the second day of the trial that is expected to take several weeks.
The first witness to take the stand on Friday was Edward Wagrowski, a former detective and computer crimes expert with the Oakland County Sheriff's Office.
He also talked about his expertise in computer crimes and cell phone data.
During testimony, Wagrowski recounted heading to the area of Oxford High School after the shooting, seeing kids walking to the Meijer location nearby.
“I see kids, they looked like my kids,” he recalled getting choked up.“One kid didn’t have a shoe on, they were coming down the road, walking across the snow.”
He also talked about heading to the school later and the 90 surveillance cameras at Oxford High School. He said he was helping to identify the shooter, and starting reviewing footage from hallways and backtracking.
Wagrowski then detailed what the surveillance video showed and how the shooting unfolded on November 30, 2021.“It’s burned in my brain,” said Wagrowski.
After a break, the prosecution spent more than an hour going through text and Facebook messages between James and Jennifer, and the Crumbleys and the shooter.
Before the lunch break, the prosecution spent time with Wagrowski going through text messages and phone records between the Crumbley parents and the shooter, and between the shooter and his friend.
Text exchanges between the shooter and his parents depicted how he was seeing things and not feeling well.
“I cleaned until the clothes started flying off the shelf,” one text read.
In other messages to his friend, the shooter revealed that he was struggling.“I need help,” he texted.
Records show he texted that he was thinking about calling 911 so he could go to the hospital, “But then my parents would be really pissed,” he messaged.
According to phone records, the shooter also texted his friend that he asked to go to the doctor but was dismissed.
The questioning of Wagrowski continued into the afternoon, with prosecutors going over texts and deleted messages that Jennifer sent to her boss, including one saying "We're on the run again," before Jennifer's attorney Shannon Smith took over.
Smith pressed on how Jennifer and James Crumbley held text exchanges about if their son was home from school on certain days, about their son having a headache, and other issues that a mother and father would exchange on a normal basis.
Smith's questioning also focused on whether the information Wagrowski presented during his testimony should be interpreted as they were trying to avoid a freighting situation, rather than running from police.
Related: Coverage from day one of the trial on Thursday, Jan. 25
On Thursday, her trial began with opening statements from prosecutors and defense attorneys and four witnesses took the stand.
They were a teacher wounded in the shooting, the school's assistant principal, the gun store manager who sold the weapon and an ATF special agent.
During the trial, Crumbley was overcome with emotion, so much so that the prosecution asked the judge to ask her team to calm down her outbursts.
"I lock eyes with him and instantly see that movement and I jumped to the side," teacher Molly Darnell said.
Darnell was the first witness and described the moments the shooter raised the gun to her before taking off to injure and kill others in the high school and the text message she sent to another educator alerting them about what was happening.
"I texted my husband, 'I love you. Active shooter,' and then I started feeling blood dripping down my arms," she said.
Four students – Tate Myre, Hana St. Juliana, Madisyn Baldwin and Justin Shilling – did not. Seven others were shot – six students and Darnell.
The prosecution is trying to make the case that Crumbley was aware of her son's experience and access to guns, showing several videos of him at the gun range. Both she and the shooter posted about his 9mm gift on social media.
An identical firearm to the one the suspect drew along with the words, "the thoughts won't stop. Help me," was shown. School officials showed the drawing to Jennifer hours before the shooting, when they say she refused to take him out of school.
"She immediately began to downplay and downright lie about her level of knowledge of her son and that weapon and that drawing on November the 30th. This pattern will continue up until the time that she and her husband are found hiding from police in Detroit," Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor Marc Keast said.
"She did not have it on her radar in any way that there was any mental disturbance, that her son would ever take a gun into a school - that her son would ever shoot people," Defense
Attorney Shannon Smith said.
While we were allowed to show Jennifer Crumbley and her son at the gun range three days before the school shooting, we were not allowed to record the surveillance video from inside Oxford High School the day of the incident.
Jennifer Crumbley did not take the stand on Thursday but is expected to do so at some point during the trial.
