The mother of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting three classmates at a school near Kalamazoo, Michigan, sent a text message telling her son not to “do it” moments before police say he fired 17 shots in a classroom, she told officials, the Detroit Free Press reported Thursday.
Alexis Conner, 14, asked Conner’s mother, Misty Crumbley, not to send him text messages, telling her it “wouldn’t do any good,” a probable cause affidavit filed by the Henry County prosecutor says.
Court records and the report said two of the victims — Andy Tullis, 14, and 15-year-old Nathaniel Speck — were baseball teammates at Michigan’s Cooper City High School. The third victim, 14-year-old Alex Manjari, was a student at Kalamazoo High School, the newspaper said.
Crumbley told police she was near her son’s classroom Tuesday when she received a call from him.
“It was her son texting her telling her, ‘Mom, Mom, don’t text me,'” Sgt. Dan Kenyon said in the affidavit, according to the newspaper. “She told him not to text because it would ‘do no good.’ She also told him if he did that she would call the police. She also told him to take off his jacket.”
Kenyon said the teenager handed his jacket to her, but she searched her own jacket for bullets. She also noticed Conner’s bag had a clip, but she did not find any.
Crumbley told the paper she did not speak to her son. She said she knew he attended the high school and that her son had a handgun.
The newspaper reported Crumbley called police and identified her son as the suspect and told investigators that the shooting happened in the medical building on campus. Kenyon said police found Conner with a semiautomatic handgun.
An investigation revealed that seven of the shots fired were returned by a safe and five others struck concrete, the affidavit said.
Kenyon said six victims had gunshot wounds, with one shot hitting a classroom door and four others hitting school equipment or walls.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.