“It was like reliving Oxford all over again,” said Andrea Ferguson, whose daughter attends Michigan State — and was at Oxford High School when four classmates were slain.
Multiple parents and students relived the horror of a school shooting on Monday, having survived the Oxford High School massacre only to go on to Michigan State where three people were slain.
Five people were wounded, along with the three killed, in East Lansing, which is about 100 miles away from the home of Andrea Ferguson, whose daughter, who started at Michigan State this semester, survived the Oxford High School mass shooting in 2021.
Ferguson told affiliate WDIV of Detroit that she “never expected in my lifetime to have to experience two school shootings.”
“It was like reliving Oxford all over again,” she said. “The phone call, the word shooting, shooter, it was surreal.”
The Oakland County Sheriff Department — which responded to both shootings — took note of the horrific repeat of violence and said in a Facebook post: “We also know that this will be a terrible flashback for our Oxford community, especially those students that graduated from Oxford high school and now attend MSU.”
Jennifer Mancini told the Detroit Free Press that her Oxford High School graduate, now a freshman at Michigan State, was across the street from the student union when gunfire erupted on Monday night.
The terrified student called her mother.
“She said, ‘Mom, I hear gunshots … What’s going on?’ “Mancini told the newspaper.
The daughter told her mother she wants to come home.
“I can’t believe this is happening again,” said Mancini. “She said that she had PTSD. She said she can’t believe this is happening again.”
Then-Oxford High School student Ethan Crumbley gunned down four schoolmates on Nov. 30, 2021, at the campus about 45 miles north of downtown Detroit.
Crumbley, who was 15 at the time of the shootings, pleaded guilty to all charges against him this past October.
The Oxford shooting drew national attention, not just for the killings — but also for the prosecution of the shooter’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, who are accused of ignoring warning signs that might have led to the deadly rampage.
They’ve been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and have pleaded not guilty.