By Ben Solis
Staff Writer
Posted: October 9, 2023 10:03 AM

The father of Hana St. Juliana, a victim of the Oxford High School shooting in 2021, is suing the state and the Department of State Police for the wrongful death of his daughter, alleging that officials were deliberately indifferent to the risk posed by shooter Ethan Crumbley.

Steve St. Juliana is the plaintiff in St. Juliana v. State Police (COC Docket No. 23-000139), which seeks damages under the state's wrongful death statute. Citing OK2SAY reports and conversations between law enforcement and the school, St. Juliana said the records show that the threat posed by Crumbley was ignored, resulting in "unconscionable dereliction of duty." The lawsuit was filed last week.

The claims arise from the shooting but also from another lawsuit, St. Juliana v. Oxford Community School District (COC Docket No. 22-10805), in which information about State Police's duties and alleged failures were brought to light.

"(State Police) failed to protect (Hana) from known and foreseeable risks caused by violence occurring at her school," the complaint states. "This 'conscience shocking' behavior of the state and MSP violated Hana St. Juliana's rights under Article I, Section 17 of the Michigan Constitution because they deprived her of life without due process of law."

Although the complaint, filed this week in the Court of Claims, seeks damages, it does not disclose how much St. Juliana is seeking from the state for his daughter's death.

It does argue, however, that State Police under the Student Safety Act must monitor reports and public information regarding self-harm or violent criminal acts directed at students, school employees or schools in general. The main tool for that monitoring is the OK2SAY hotline.

St. Juliana argued documents show those reports of potential threats have been rising since 2019, each with credible threats of violence that were disrupted through intervention. Despite that increase, he alleges numerous threat reports came through in November 2021 that school officials ignored or downplayed, including those noting that a student on social media had posted strange things and that his username was a code for November 10 and 10:05 a.m.

Days earlier a student or group of students had painted pentagrams around the school and threw a severed deer head into the courtyard. The student believed to be responsible for those actions was a 17-year-old 12th grade student referred to in the complaint as CV.

The safety notice was received by Kristy Gibson-Marshall and Kurt Nuss, assistant principals at Oxford High School, and Principal Steve Wolf. The student who sent that notice described being worried about something CV drew and posted online and said it may be a threat.

The complaint, which does not name Crumbley but refers to him as John Doe, says that on November 11, 2021, the shooter brought a severed bird's head in a jar into school. Students had circulated photos of the bird and thought it was related to the student's threat to the school. Wolf was made aware that Crumbley might have been the student responsible for bringing the bird's head into the school.

A concerned parent also sent a notice to Wolf, telling him that she believed that there was a threat to harm the school to occur on Friday of that week and questioned bringing her son to school. She asked for the matter to be addressed.

Wolf responded by saying that officials had investigated every social media post and rumor it received, and that no credible threat existed.

A letter sent to some parents and guardians from Wolf reiterated his statements, touting the fact that it had investigated the situation, the rumors and posts were not connected to a threat and that the school had "two highly trained security guards and an Oakland County Resource Officer on site."

Wolf continued to assert in communications with parents that there was no threat to the school, even though on November 17, 2021, a planned school attack tip came through from State Police Technician Kelcie Bower, who was employed by the Michigan Intelligence Operations Center's OK2SAY unit. Her report stated that CV had made the odd social media posts and created a countdown clock on the Instagram app, which students and others believed was a sign that he was going to harm the school.

The lawsuit filed Monday asserts that CV and John Doe – Crumbley – were friends and were in regular contact. Nuss received the communication from Bower and shared it with Oakland County Deputy Sheriff Jason Louwaert. He informed Nuss that nothing in the tip was new to him, that they had already investigated and didn't see any actual threat.

"Based on available records, neither Officer Louwaert nor Assistant Principal Nuss took any further steps to assess the risk associated with this tip," the complaint states. "On November 26, 2021, Doe received a Sig Saur 9 mm semi-automatic handgun as a gift from his father. Based on available information, the MSP was aware of each of the above-described incidents of school violence."

Days later, the school started intervening with Crumbley after he had turned in a homework assignment with violent drawings and words scrawled across the page and was found looking up info about ammunition in class. Crumbley's parents were eventually called and after a meeting with school officials refused to take him home.

Less than two hours later, on November 30, 2021, Crumbley opened fire with the handgun purchased for him by his father, killing St. Juliana's daughter and three other students. Others were shot but survived with serious injuries.

Because those threats went ignored, St. Juliana now claims that State Police violated his daughter's right to bodily integrity guaranteed by the state Constitution by not doing enough to stop the attack, or at the very least enhancing security at the school. He cited the Bauserman v. Unemployment Insurance Agency holding from the Michigan Supreme Court and said the remedy afforded to him was a constitutional tort.

"The escalating school violence incidents and events occurring from November 4 through and including the morning of November 30 placed OHS at risk for a more serious school violence incidence," the complaint states. "The escalating school violence incidents put OHS in crisis mode. Minimally enhanced security measures triggered by the escalating incidents of school violence, if timely mandated by the MSP, would have been effective in deterring further escalation of the risk of school violence or would have prevented the November 30th shooting from occurring."

St. Juliana's complaint goes on to say that the breach of State Police's duties resulted in part to the failure of high school officials and the sheriff's office from taking the threat seriously.

"In this case, the MSP failed to follow the statutorily required policy and practice of making a timely risk assessment and failed to aggressively intervene to prevent the November 30 mass shooting from occurring," it states. "The dereliction of duty by the MSP 'shocks the conscience' because the risk of foreseeable harm was exceedingly high, the likelihood that the incidents of school violence unless abated by security measures would continue to escalate was almost a certainty, the responses of OHS and the Oakland County Sheriff's Department was grossly inadequate, and the MSP failure to follow up with the known and escalating reports of school violence as required by law was appalling based on the information available to MSP."