OXFORD, Mich. – Lack of information from the school board about what happened during and before the tragic Oxford High School shooting in 2021 has been at the center of ongoing anger and frustration in the district.
Parents have been criticizing the district for providing little information about what happened on and what led up to the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting, in which four students were murdered and seven other people were injured.
Going back and forth for months, the school board has declined multiple offers from the Michigan attorney general to conduct an investigation after the fact. Eventually, the board was pressured into hiring an outside firm to conduct an investigation -- but those results aren’t expected until at least this fall.
“All we want to know is what Tate’s last day looked like,” said Buck Myre, father of Tate Myre, a student murdered in the shooting.
When a pre-sentencing hearing began for the Oxford shooter last month, Tate Myre’s parents were in attendance, listening to days of disturbing testimony regarding the shooter. The grieving parents initially did not want to watch videos of the shooting captured on surveillance cameras inside the school. They planned to walk out of the courtroom when the videos played.
But when the moment came, the mother and father decided to watch the footage that showed the Oxford shooter kill their child. Buck Myre said they had no choice but to watch the horrific videos.
“We were forced to watch it, because we don’t have one answer for that day,” Buck Myre told the school board during a recent meeting. “You guys made us watch it.
“Tate had a pulse; he heard her; he didn’t die alone. It took us one year and nine months to hear that,” Buck Myre said, referencing the witness testimony of an assistant school principal present during the shooting.
Tate Myre’s dad has made it painfully clear the lack of information about what happened, and why it happened, haunts him and the rest of his family. The two-year anniversary of the tragic mass shooting is quickly approaching, and community members still eagerly await information.
“It’s been 21 months, 616 days today -- that’s how long the victims’ families, and this community, have been waiting for answers,” a community member said during the board meeting.
UPDATE: 3rd-party report on Oxford shooting to come out in October, but questions linger
Details about the shooter and the shooting have slowly been revealed over the last year and a half in courtrooms and court documents. But, with allegations against school staff and administrators accused of not doing enough to help prevent the shooting, the community wants answers from the district itself.
The district has promised to provide an independent audit of the tragic shooting and the days leading up to it. Those results may come as soon as early fall. But, with the community’s fundamental distrust of how the district has handled this process, it’s unknown if the parents will even accept what’s in the report.
Watch Mara McDonald’s full report below.
More: Sentencing for Oxford shooter put on ice with Miller hearing not yet finished