By Aya Elamroussi | CNN

There is a “strong possibility” the 15-year-old sophomore accused of killing four fellow students this week at a Michigan high school had the gun in his backpack when he met shortly before the shooting with administrators and his parents over his concerning behavior that day, the prosecutor in the case told CNN on Thursday night.

Ethan Robert Crumbley. (Oakland County Sheriff’s Office) 

But at that point, no disciplinary action was warranted, the school district superintendent said Thursday.

Ethan Crumbley has been charged as an adult with terrorism, murder and other counts in Tuesday’s shooting that also left seven people wounded at Oxford High School north of Detroit. It was the deadliest shooting at a US K-12 campus since 2018 and the 32nd such attack since August 1.

Hours before the rampage, a teacher saw Crumbley engage in “concerning” behavior that prompted school officials to pull him into an office and call his parents for a meeting, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard told CNN. After that discussion, Crumbley was allowed back to class.

“No discipline was warranted. There are no discipline records at the high school,” Tim Throne, the superintendent of the Oxford Community Schools district, said Thursday in a video statement. “Yes, this student did have contact with our front office. And yes, his parents were on campus November 30th.”

There is a “strong possibility” Crumbley had the gun he allegedly used in the shooting in his backpack during the meeting, prosecutor Karen McDonald of Oakland County told CNN.

“During Covid, they don’t use lockers, so they just have backpacks,” she said.

“Unfortunately, he was allowed to get back to class, and we now know that he had a weapon with him at that time, and that is simply tragic,” McDonald said.

Bouchard told CNN on Friday morning’s “New Day” that the school’s video surveillance camers will let investigators “really map out exaactly and literally watch what the perpetrator did” from that meeting through the shooting and being taken into custody.

He said the shooter had the gun “on his person or in his backpack or somehow secreted” it away from a school location.

Another warning sign had come Monday — the day before the shooting — when a different teacher “saw and heard something that she felt was disturbing” related to Crumbley’s conduct in the classroom, Bouchard said. School officials held a counseling session with Crumbley about the behavior in question, and his parents were notified by phone, Bouchard added.

Both McDonald and Bouchard have declined to expand on the details of the meetings or the conduct that prompted them.

The semiautomatic handgun recovered in the attack was bought Friday by Crumley’s father, Bouchard has said.

McDonald is expected to announce Friday if charges will be filed against Crumbley’s parents, she told CNN. Prosecutors are considering information regarding the purchase of the gun and its accessibility and storage, along with other details.

School is like a ‘war zone,’ superintendent says

Two days after the deadly attack, Oxford High School is “like a war zone,” Throne told his community from the school in the 13-minute video posted on YouTube.

“This high school is a wreck right now,” he said, adding it could take weeks for the school to be repaired.

The shooting claimed the lives of Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Justin Shilling, 17, officials have said.

Throne commended students and staff for how they handled an active shooter threat, during which some administrators performed CPR and students used desks and chairs to barricade themselves inside classrooms for protection.

More than 100 calls to 911 were made to report the shooting as police rushed to the school at 12:52 p.m. local time, Bouchard said. Within “two to three minutes” of officers’ arrival, the shooter had surrendered.

“I believe they literally saved lives, having taken down the suspect with a loaded firearm still in the building,” the sheriff said.

The superintendent acknowledged district officials have not been communicating quickly and said he’s working on meeting with the parents of the four students killed in the shooting.

“I apologized to our staff today that we haven’t been communicating sooner, and that’s OK. It’s OK because in this instance, we have to go by the book and we simply cannot communicate things until others have communicated things,” Throne explained. “And this is as much information as we can give you today.”

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