While the motives and facts behind the Evergreen High School shooting are still up in the air pending a full investigation, the gun violence has raised questions about culpability.

“We can’t just continue to think that this is a school problem,” said state Rep. Tammy Story, an Evergreen Democrat, after the shooting. “It is a societal problem, it is a gun safety problem, and it is a weapons problem.”

The alleged shooter, Desmond Holly, entered Evergreen High School with a loaded revolver around 12:30 p.m. on Sept. 10, fired multiple rounds and reloaded “a lot” of times before eventually critically injuring two students and taking his own life, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

Holly was 16 years old and, under federal law, he can’t possess a handgun. It is unknown how he received it.

Jacki Kelley, a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, did not confirm that Holly’s parents are under investigation when asked Thursday, but she did say that “everything is on the table.”

Holly’s parents are being fully cooperative, Kelley said.

Could they be considered culpable for the shooting?

Technically yes, attorney Scott Robinson, a 9NEWS legal analyst, told The Denver Gazette, but it would take strong evidence that they were negligent.

“It’s theoretically possible,” he said. “I know we have a statute that makes parents civilly liable for criminal actions with a very nominal limit. But in terms of criminal culpability, it’s not something that has happened here.”

There are three parental responsibility statutes in Colorado that can make guardians obligated to pay restitution in civil cases regarding property, shoplifting or car crashes.

Parents of children in criminal cases can be ordered to pay restitution of up to $25,000 per victim, and criminal charges can be pressed against parents for negligence.

But when it comes to mass shootings or school shootings, parents have only ever been criminally charged for culpability once in the country’s history — James and Jennifer Crumbley in Michigan.

The Crumbleys were the parents of the Oxford High School shooter. They were found guilty on four counts of involuntary manslaughter in separate jury trials last year. Jennifer Crumbley was convicted on Feb. 6, 2024, and James Crumbley was convicted on March 14, 2024.

On Nov. 30, 2021, then-15-year-old Ethan Crumbley shot 11 people at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Michigan. He killed four students and injured seven other people, including a teacher.

He was eventually sentenced to life in prison, but his parents were also sentenced to 10-to-15 years in prison for — Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald argued — repeatedly ignoring clear and obvious warning signs that could have prevented the tragedy. 

For example, the parents bought Crumbley a handgun as an early Christmas present, didn’t properly store the weapon, didn’t pick him up from school when the school told them of his violent drawings the morning of the shooting and didn’t do anything regarding his openly deteriorating mental health.

“Parents are not expected to be psychic,” Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews said during the sentencing, according to the The Detroit News. “But these convictions are not about poor parenting. These convictions confirm repeated acts, or lack of acts, that could’ve halted an oncoming runaway train.”

The Crumbley case was one-of-a-kind in U.S. history because it takes a significant amount of evidence of negligence by parents to warrant criminal charges, according to Robinson.

“Those situations, as abhorrent as they are, are entirely fact-specific,” he said.

For example, if parents take a child to shoot a gun but keep it locked securely, there would be no grounds for criminal charges, according to Robinson.

“It is a significant hurdle for a prosecutor to jump unless there is that ‘case-significant’ history. If the facts are there, I don’t doubt any prosecutor in this state would file charges. But the facts have to be pretty extreme.”