The teenager who walked into his high school in Oxford, Michigan, on November 30, 2021, and murdered four of his classmates will spend the rest of his life in prison after he was sentenced on Friday.
The Oxford High School shooter, who will not be named per Daily Wire policy, asked Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Kwame Rowe Friday that he impose “any sentence” that the family of the victims asked for. All 29 of the people who gave victim statements before the sentencing — including grieving family members, students, and a teacher who was injured in the mass shooting — told the judge they wanted the shooter to be sentenced to life without parole, and the judge agreed, The Detroit News reported.
“The court cannot ignore the deep trauma the defendant caused to the state of Michigan, but particularly the Oxford community,” Rowe said. “The terror that he caused in the state of Michigan and in Oxford is a true act of terrorism.”
Four Oxford High School students were killed when the shooter opened fire in the halls of his school two years ago. Madisyn Baldwin, 17, Hana St. Juliana, 14, Tate Myre, 16, and Justin Shilling, 17, all died in the shooting while six other students and a teacher were injured. In October 2022, the shooter pleaded guilty to 24 charges, which included one count of terrorism causing death and four counts of first-degree murder.
During his victim statement, the father of 16-year-old victim Tate Myre addressed the shooter directly.
“I understand from journal entries, this was the desired outcome — for us to feel the pain that you had,” Buck Myre said. “I will tell you this: We are miserable. We miss Tate. Our family has a permanent hole in it that can never be fixed, ever.”
Nicole Beausoleil, the mother of 17-year-old victim Madisyn Baldwin refused to even use the shooter’s name in her statement, calling him “trash” and “waste,” ABC News reported. She then asked the judge to give the shooter the same sentence that the shooter gave to her, a sentence “that I cannot escape from.”
The shooter’s defense attorneys argued that the shooter, who was 15 when he carried out his killings, should be spared a life sentence, saying that over the past two years the shooter has become “a different person.” The defense said that the shooter was on the “precipice” of a crisis and had no one to help him, the Detroit Free Press reported.
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Judge Brown said that mental illness, even if the shooter had a history of it, did not play a part in the mass killer’s attack. Brown noted that the shooter was obsessed with violence, planned the attack for weeks, and wanted to stay alive after committing the atrocity so he could see people suffer.
“He could have changed his mind (after shooting his first victim),” Rowe said while handing down the sentence, according to the Detroit Free Press. “But he didn’t. He continued to walk through the school picking and choosing who was going to die.”
“As the defendant said in his own words, this is nobody’s fault but his own,” the judge added.