OXFORD, MI –A panel of judges last week determined there was no substance to claims that two school employees of Oxford Public Schools acted in such a way as to increase the immediate risk of danger leading up to a 15-year-old student shooting and killing four of his classmates and injuring others at Oxford High School in 2021.

Victims of the deadly shooting and their families have filed several lawsuits asserting that Shawn Hopkins, who was a counselor at the school and Nicholas Ejak, the former dean of students acted “recklessly” in the hours leading up to the shooting, showing “indifference” towards the impending danger and worsened the risk of tragedy.

But Hopkins and Ejak displayed the “opposite of callous indifference” towards concerning behaviors by the shooter and their actions were geared towards mitigating risk, the panel of federal judges found Thursday.

The shooter, who killed fellow students Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Justin Shilling, 17, and Madisyn Baldwin, 17, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in December of 2023. The parents of the shooter were sentenced to 10-15 years in prison on four counts of involuntary manslaughter last April for their role in the killings.

The cases against the shooter and his parents were landmark cases, marking new legal territory for convicting a school shooter of terrorism and holding the parents of a school shooter criminally liable for their actions and inactions that made the shooting possible.

The families represented in the case that was before the federal judges panel had sought to collect damages by establishing that Hopkins and Ejak took actions that “were so outrageous and so callous in their disregard of the danger” posed by the shooter that they “shock the conscience”.

The judges’ decision outlines the bulk of the actions, mainly Ejak, as dean of students and Hopkins, as a counselor, being alerted that the shooter had drawn guns, bloody bodies and concerning messages on a math worksheet on the morning of the shooting.

The shooter was promptly removed from class and Hopkins called his parents in for a meeting, where they declined to take him home for the day and Hopkins informed them that if they didn’t get their son into counseling within 48 hours, he would call Child Protective Services.

The case against the school argued that the warning, made in front of the shooter, to potentially call Child Protective Services, put the school community at greater risk, exasperating the situation with reckless disregard to safety.

However the judges’ panel stated that the same actions being questioned further showcase a concerted effort to mitigate risk by getting Child Protective Services involved.

The decision is a blow to victims of the shooting and their families’ search for accountability from Oxford High School as many have pursued local and state authorities to investigate the school for its actions leading up to and during the shooting.

At a news conference in Oxford just before the third anniversary of the shooting, parents of the victims of the shooting implored the state Attorney General’s office to open an investigation into the school to offer some answers to the school community on what wasn’t done to prevent the tragedy.

Buck Myre, father of Tate Myre who was 16-years old when he was shot and killed by the shooter called for change at the news conference last November, change that could only be brought on by examining how the shooting occurred and what the school could have done to prevent it.

“This has always been about change — period — nothing else. It’s time for our state government to investigate this. Stop hiding; stop making excuses. A Michigan public school was the scene of the shooting. Kids’ lives were lost. Kids were shot. A teacher was shot. Every kid in school that day has a shooting badge, a shooting badge that they will heavily carry on their chest for the rest of their lives,” Myre said. “Don’t we want to learn from this?”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer proposed allocating $1 million towards an investigation into the Oxford High School shooting in the state budget this year and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has expressed interest in performing such an investigation.

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.