Watch live: Lawyers give opening statements in Jennifer Crumbley Oxford shooting trial

The historic case of Jennifer Crumbley, the first parent in America to be charged and tried in a mass school shooting, began in earnest Thursday with opening statements and testimony after a jury was seated Wednesday.

The most surprising development in opening statements was Crumbley's defense attorney saying the mother will testify in her own defense later in the trial.

The panel of 12 jurors and five alternates includes 10 women and seven men, most of them parents, including multiple gun owners and hunters. The jurors will be tasked with determining whether Crumbley is responsible for the deaths of four students killed by her son in the 2021 Oxford High School shooting.

Watch the trial here.

Assistant Prosecutor Marc Keist began his opening statement by introducing the jury to the victims, Hana St. Juliana, 14; Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17, and Justin Shilling, 17.

Jennifer Crumbley and her husband, James, who goes on trial in March, are charged with involuntary manslaughter in their son Ethan's rampage at Oxford High on Nov. 30, 2021. He has pleaded guilty to killing four students and injuring seven other people, and is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His parents are the first in America to be tried in a mass school shooting.

Oxford High teacher who was shot is first witness

Teacher Molly Darnell told jurors how she was in her classroom on the day of the shooting and heard students screaming in the hallway. She saw students running out of the school.

"I heard three things quickly together," Darnell said, her voice shaking. "They were the sound of like three loud pops that I could have mistaken for lockers closing."

The principal came over the PA and said the school was going into lockdown. Her door was still open, so she moved to shut her door.

"I immediately pull it shut," she said, noting she then tried to install a night lock, but in her peripheral vision, through a glass partition, she saw someone dressed in dark, oversized clothing.

"I locked eyes with him," she said, struggling to maintain composure. "I realize he's raising a gun to me."

"I moved away from the door ... I jumped to the side."

She felt a burn like hot water in her left arm. She then turned around and saw a bullet hole through her office window.

"It seems really silly," she said, crying, "that I couldn't wrap my head around what was happening."

She then crawled on her hands on her knees, installed the night lock and barricaded the door with a rolling cart.

"The only thing I could think was he's gonna come back and finish what he wanted to do," Darnell said, noting she then crouched down behind a cabinet.

Then she texted her husband: "I love you. Active shooter."

She started feeling blood dripping down her arm, but it didn't register that she had been shot until she saw a hole in her cardigan.

She stood and showed the jury where in her arm the bullet struck. She told jurors how she put a tourniquet on her arm. Her daughter texted her from a neighboring school district.

"Mom, are you OK?"

I responded: "I love you. I'm sheltered in place."

She did not tell her daughter that she had been shot.

She was locked down for about 20 minutes, texting with other staff at the school, but not telling them that she had been shot. She said she didn't want to cause panic.

She heard a volume of footsteps. She texted a teacher next door: "Hey, you're the only one who knows right now, but I've been shot. I hope I'm the only one."

The teacher next door said, "Oh my gosh, I'm calling the office."

A school official knocked at her door, "Are you OK?"

Through tears, she said, "I didn't trust that it was him at my door."

Then police came knocking and said, "Are you in here? Are you injured?"

She opened the door from her knees. The officers scooped her up.

During this point in her testimony, the prosecutor showed the jury surveillance footage from inside Oxford High School. It was the scene of the hallway outside Darnell's classroom.

The defense did not cross-examine her.

Parents of two of the victims sat expressionless in the courtroom during the testimony, which they heard over the summer during a hearing to determine whether Ethan Crumbley was eligible as a juvenile to be sentenced to life without parole. Those attending trial are Craig Shilling, whose son, Justin, was killed in a bathroom execution style; and Steve St. Juliana, whose daughter, Hana, also was killed.

Assistant principal testifies

The second witness was Oxford High School assistant principal Kristy Gibson-Marshall, who confronted the gunman during his rampage and tried to save the life of one of the victims who was shot in the head in the hallway, but did not survive.

Gibson-Marshall was helping in the cafeteria when the shooting happened. She recalled seeing students running and laughing, not knowing something was going on. But then the faces she saw coming down the hall appeared more serious, so she got on her radio and reported something was happening.

Then came the alert. She was supposed to go into lockdown. Instead, she went down a hallway. She smelled what she thought was cap gun. But then she heard two gunshots, and walked toward them.

She entered a hallway.

"I saw a student lying on the ground. His face was covered ... I could see another student walking in my direction. His arm was up."

So she ventured toward the student walking toward her. It was the Ethan Crumbley. She recognized him.

"When he got close enough to me ... I asked if he was OK. It just didn't seem right that it would be him ... I didn't think it was possible that he was the shooter."

"I said what's going on? ... He didn't respond."

The shooter never aimed his gun at her, she said, but she got on her radio and reported seeing him and a victim.

Then she went back to the boy on the ground.

It was Tate Myre, she told the jury, choking up. She stayed with Tate until help arrived.

The prosecution then showed a video of the shooting, prompting the defendant to break down in tears.

More: Meet Jennifer Crumbley's jurors: Several gun owners, mostly women

Prosecution's opening argument

Keast flashed the victims' pictures on a large screen, and stated their names.

"They weren’t in a car crash. They weren’t sick. They were murdered in an act of terror" by the defendant's son, Keast said. "Jennifer Crumbley didn't pull the trigger that day, but she is responsible for their deaths."

Keast told jurors how the day after her son walked out of the store with his new gun, Jennifer Crumbley made a social media post about how she went to the shooting range with her son, and that the gun was her son's early Christmas present.

Keast said the evidence will prove that on the day of the shooting, she was “given the opportunity to prevent these murders from ever happening. Instead, she chose to do nothing.”

He told jurors the parents were cold when they were called into the school on the morning of the shooting, when they were shown a drawing of a gun on a math sheet.

Keast said she was sent the drawing by a school counselor who requested a meeting with her at the school that day.

“Apparently, that raised an alarm with Jennifer Crumbley,” Keast said.

Before going the meeting, he said, Jennifer Crumbley communicated her concern to her husband in messages on Facebook. She wrote to James Crumbley: “Emergency” on the morning of Nov. 30, 2021, and sent him the picture.

Her husband responded: “My god, WTF.”

Jennifer Crumbley also wrote: “He said he was distraught about last night” and “I’m very concerned headed to his school.”

The couple went to the school. Keast said school officials expected them to take their son home and set up an appointment with a mental health professional, but they didn’t. Keast said Jennifer Crumbley abruptly ended the meeting after just over 11 minutes.

"They didn't say anything about the fact that that firearm (in the drawing) is identical to the Sig Sauer 9 mm (they had bought him.) They didn't mention anything about how the gun was stored. They didn’t mention anything about his increased mental distress. … They didn't embrace him,” Keast said.“They didn't stop by the house to look for the gun. You’ll learn never once did they ask their son, ‘Where's the gun?'

“They did nothing.”

That's gross negligence, he said.

He said the prosecution will show how senseless the tragedy was, all because Jennifer Crumbley didn't take "small, easy" steps that could have prevented it.

"It's not illegal to be a bad parent," Keast stressed. "We're not here to put a restriction on gun owners ... we're here because when Jennifer looked at this drawing ... she looked at it with context and origin."

That's why she's responsible for these deaths, he said, stressing mutliple times: "She did nothing."

Defense opening statement

Defense attorney Shannon Smith began her opening statement by quoting a line in a song by Taylor Swift that says 'Band-aids don't fix bullet holes.'

"That's what this case is about," She said. "It's about the prosecution trying to put a Band-Aid on a problem ... it's an effort to make the community feel better ... it's an effort to send a message to gun owners."

"None of those problems will be changed by charging Jennifer Crumbley with involuntary manslaughter," she said.

She went on to say: "The evidence in this case is absolutely horrific. It will make you sick and disgusted, scare you and traumatize you."

She added: "Mrs. Crumbley, myself, everyone in this courtroom agrees, the worst possible thing happened when Ethan Crumbley used a gun and terrorized Oxford High School."

She urged the jury to be mindful that the prosecution's evidence will frighten and alarm, but it's about the shooter, not the mother.

"She didn't have it on her radar in any way that her son would ever take a gun into a school, that her son would shoot people," Smith said. "Jennifer Crumbley did the best she could as a mother to a child who grew up as a teenager, and had no way to know what would happen."

She told jurors that Jennifer Crumbley was the kind of mother who took her son to doctors, like when a suspicious mole appeared, monitored his homework on a website for school parents, and texted her husband repeatedly when their son wasn't home.

"She was a hypervigilant mother who cared about her son more than anything in this world," Smith said.

"She is not a perfect parent. The prosecution has very carefully pulled out a sliver of evidence from a forest of trees to try to convince that there was something wrong with Ethan and that his mom should have known."

Smith said when the mom learned about the violent drawing her son had made of a gun, she "freaked out" and raced to the school.

She met with the counselors, who told her the shooter was of no risk to anyone. "This is not a situation where Jennifer Crumbley refused to take her child to school," Smith said, contending that school officials gave her the option.

When the mom learned there was a shooting at the high school, she immediately became concerned that her son had hurt himself. "In Jennifer Crumbley's mind, she believes that her son has done something stupid," like that he fired a shot in the air, Smith said.

She then became concerned that her son was attempting suicide, and texted him: "Don't do it."

"It still has never crossed her mind that her son would shoot someone," Smith said.

When she saw her son at a police substation, his eyes were black. "It was a son she did not recognize."

About Ethan Crumbley's parents hiding out

Smith also talked about the night the parents left their home and hid out in an art gallery in Detroit. She said they got burner phones because their phones were taken by police. They worked to find lawyers. They don't know what to do. They don't understand what they're being charged with.

They were faced with knowing their "son is gone."

On Friday, Dec. 3, 2021, they learned from a press conference that they were being charged with involuntary manslaughter. Smith said they made plans to turn themselves in on Saturday morning after asking a friend to let them stay in the gallery.

"They were not hiding," Smith said, adding that when police found the parents, they were standing outside their car smoking cigarettes.

"The prosecution has grossly misconstrued facts in this case," she said, telling the jury that it will hear from Jennifer Crumbley later in the trial.

"She will tell you that when she saw the materials in this case, she learned that her son had not been her son for months, that he had been manipulating her, that he had been sending alarming text messages to other people. You will hear that the school never advised Mrs. Crumbley of problematic issues that if she heard about, she would have done something about it."

Smith blasted school officials, stressing repeatedly that the mom was never informed about a lot of concerning behavior.

"This was absolutely not foreseeable. This was absolutely not expected," Smith said.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Oxford shooting: Watch opening statements in Jennifer Crumbley trial