Oxford High School shooter sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole

Two years after the massacre, teenager Ethan Crumbley was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering four Oxford High School students and injuring seven other people in a rampage he carried out with a gun that his parents had bought him as an early Christmas present.

In handing down the sentence, Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Kwame Rowe noted that the murderer himself did not ask for a sentence that might allow eventual parole, even though his lawyers did. In the end, it was Crumbley’s extensive planning, obsession with violence, his stated desire for notoriety, his unwillingness to change his mind when he had the chance and his point-blank executions that convinced Rowe to hand down the stiffest punishment.

“He wanted to see the impact of his own crime, which is why he didn’t take his own life,” Rowe said in pronouncing the sentence. “He chose not to die on that day, because he wanted the notoriety. The terror that he caused in the state of Michigan — and in Oxford — is a true act of terrorism,” Rowe said.

Read more: Detroit Free Press