Even if they are, they were the most famous fugitives in North America, crossing a border where their ID would be highly scrutinized. Their odds of getting through a border checkpoint were rather miniscule.
When you really think about it, if their intent was to try to evade the authorities, driving to Detroit to try to cross the border might actually have been the WORST thing they could possibly do. They would be no less subject to identification and arrest in Canada, but are just adding the risk of getting caught when crossing the border.
This little run for the border was pure, unadulterated panic. There was no plan further than twelve hours into the future, no end game.
I don’t know if it was previously mentioned, but the Detroit Chief of Police, in announcing the apprehension of the parents, seemed to believe that it was indeed their intent to escape to Canada.
Clearly, these two aren’t the sharpest pair of knives in the drawer, for all the reasons noted above. Plus, did they even have passports? They would likely have been apprehended at the border, and in any case would not have been allowed entry because of COVID restrictions regarding full vaccination requirements for foreign nationals AND a negative COVID test within the previous 72 hours. Some exceptions are permitted under certain circumstances, but “being a wanted fugitive” isn’t one of them!
Hard to believe they thought the busiest American-Canadian border crossing was their easiest path to freedom. But, yeah, not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
In a world where some Americans crossing the border are outraged! outraged!! that the second amendment doesn’t apply in Canada and let them keep their arsenals north of 49, I am never surprised that some people think it’s just a simple matter of rolling down their window and saying, “Shopping trip, officer” to enter Canada.
Why would they use a border crossing? There are many ways to go between the us and canada. As far as I know there isn’t a wall…and a history of people and goods being smuggled between the countries.
The arraignment was interesting. A good preview of a trial. I’m betting that they will have separate lawyers when it comes to trial. I’m also thinking that wife will throw hubby under the wheels of justice. She had the sobbing mother demeanour, he had the defiant “how dare you arrest me” demeanour.
Sadly, I can remember a time when you could do that. Usually a run from Mount Vernon, WA to Vancouver, BC. There was a brewery out on an island in the river that was very good, and a Ukrainian deli in the same complex that made the most amazing things. Well worth the hours-long international drive there and back.
I’m not quite that sure. At 1;22, right after the media reported the shootings, Jennifer Crumbley texted, “Ethan, don’t do it.” Note: not “Ethan, are you safe?” or “Ethan, please tell me you’re not the shooter.”
I do think they’re not bright, especially after reading Jennifer’s fan letter to Trump (not the fact she wrote it–the letter, itself). However, I also suspect they’re the type of obstructive, resistant parents schools see so often these days.They weren’t about to pull their son out of school just because school officials recommended it. Nor were they about to search his backpack. You know, Nobody gets to tell me how to raise my kid!
One thing I don’t understand is why school officials didn’t search the kid’s backpack. Maybe they didn’t think they had reasonable suspicion, though the drawing along with Ethan’s previous search for ammo seems like it would have provided that. Or maybe they under-reacted. I had an administrator who didn’t search the backpack of a kid with anger issues who’d shown a gun inside it to other students (just outside the building at the end of lunch). He said the kids reporting it didn’t see the potential shooter enter the building with it two minutes later (because they were inside reporting it to me). Maybe, he said, the kid had run to his truck and stashed it.
At Detroit/Windsor there is, however, a river. The only ways to cross without being a hell of a swimmer or stealing a boat - and they’re looking for boats, they aren’t stupid - are the Ambassador Bridge, the tunnel, and a ferry specifically for trucks. It’s actually one of the hardest places to cross the border surreptitiously, unlike the many very lightly watched thousands of miles of land border.
That’s why I can’t figure out why they went for Detroit. It’s highly populated, the border is highly policed, and the population is largely African-American where they were. They would not be able to move freely. Even Port Huron would’ve been a better choice to go to, if they were hoping to cross a river to leave the country.
Not sure why they thought going to Canada would give them the freedom they were looking for anyway, or why heading to a land border in the Midwest wouldn’t have been an easier escape. But these jackasses apparently have 99 problems but a functioning brain ain’t one.
My guess is that they weren’t making plans from a blank slate, but – to the extent these two Rhodes Scholars could think – they may have reasoned forward from the resources they had.
It sounds like, for example, they knew somebody who could grant them access to the Detroit warehouse building in which they were caught:
James and Jennifer Crumbley did not break into the commercial space, but rather were aided by someone who let them into the building, police said.
Wasn’t there a time not all that long ago when some schools made kids use transparent backpacks? I still see those plastic see-throughs in the stores. When was that? (I haven’t been around any kids since I last was one around 1960.)
You are hugely speculating about Moms frame of mind based on a few quotes. You have no idea what she knew or what her reactions meant. I find your armchair psychoanalysis to be highly speculative and without merit.
I don’t see BigT’s speculations as being all that huge at all (or stated with absolute certainty.) They strike me as being by far the likeliest interpretation. While the parents seem stupid and reckless, the idea that they KNEW their kid would go to school and murder people is preposterously unlikely.
The ability of people to brush off warning signs is, I assure you, truly mountainous, and capable of overwhelming a lot of evidence. One does not have to be a psychologist to know this.
I dunno. It was never seriously considered at the school where I taught for various reasons. The ones I heard mentioned were financial hardship for parents, lack of privacy for students carrying tampons and pads, lack of availability (small town, not everyone has internet, etc.), and the possibility kids could still bring guns in clear backpacks if they surrounded them with other stuff. I think the last one was the clincher, but TBH, there was never a strong push in that direction.
Maybe others have more experience and knowledge than I do.
Press conference now. Something that occurs to me is, with the parents in jail as well, will there have to be a guardian appointed for the shooter?
The sheriff stated that he didn’t know if crumbley had been told that his parents had been charged, arrested, and in custody. All three are in isolation and apar from each other.
As a 15 year old he would not have funds for a lawyer and with his parents in custody they are not able to act in his interest.
What does the law do in this case?
On the parents issue, if they are heavily in the trump world they could have gotten help from trumpers. Perhaps a “I’ll hide you here and then when things calm down, we can get you cross the river in a boat.” thing.