The Oxford High School shooter will be back in court for the fourth day of a pre-sentencing Miller hearing on Friday.
The hearing will determine if the shooter, who was a minor at the time of the shooting, can be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
It originally started at the end of July and had its third day on Aug. 1 before breaking until Friday.
During the last day of the hearing, Psychologist Colin King sat in the witness box for the better part of the day, a key witness for the Oxford school shooter in his quest to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison.
"The part that sort of stood out for me was when he told his parents that he was hearing voices and he needed to see a therapist. I don’t know what 15-year-old raises his hand and says my brain hurts, I need to see a therapist...and it never happened," said King.
The defense also played surveillance video from 2020 at an Oxford diner, where the gunman once worked. It showed the teen inexplicably falling and hitting his head on the floor. The defense suggested that he sustained a head injury that may have caused the behavior that followed.
After the shooting, they played bodycam video from the Oakland County jail, showing the Oxford gunman after the shooting yelling and crying.
“Why didn’t you stop it God? Why? Why didn’t you stop it? Why didn’t you stop it, God? Why didn’t you stop it? You let it happen. Why?” he said.
Dr. King said the video was proof of the shooter’s severe mental illness.
“Someone who’s saying 'God, why didn’t you stop it?' And that’s exactly how psychosis works. You engage in an action, and somehow you don’t understand the outcome of the consequences. He’s having a panic attack and a break with reality,” said King.
To secure a sentence less than life in prison, the defense needs to show that the gunman can be rehabilitated.
In other days of the hearing, prosecutors introduced dark journal entries, chilling video and testimony from a wounded staff member who dropped to the floor to block her door.
"He was aiming to kill me," said Molly Darnell, who was one of seven people wounded that day.
At Oxford High, Darnell worked with teachers on their lesson plans. She didn't know the shooter, who was 15 at the time.
She recalled seeing an unusual rush of students outside her office at lunch.
"I'm like, OK, it could be a prank. Is there something happening in the parking lot?" Darnell recalled. "That's when an announcement came on that we were headed into lockdown. It was not a drill. There were doors slamming and the sound of pops."
She said she suddenly "locked eyes" with a boy in baggy clothes raising a gun toward her.
"I heard three very loud (shots), physically loud. I could feel them," said Darnell, who was struck in the upper left arm. "I kind of jumped to the right and felt my left shoulder move back. It felt like someone had burned me with hot water."
She said she dropped to her knees to install a portable door lock and moved a cabinet in place for protection.
"At that point I had sent my husband a text message," Darnell said. "I said, 'I love you. Active shooter.' He said, 'Just get safe.'"
She made a tourniquet with her sweater to stop the bleeding and called her husband to say she had been shot. Darnell did not return to her job when the school reopened a few months later.
"It was just too hard to be there," she said.
