Oxford Shooting Investigation in Hands of Oakland County Prosecutor, Nessel Says

Attorney General Dana Nessel expressed disappointment Tuesday that Oxford school officials turned down her offer to conduct an independent investigation of the school shooting that left four students dead.

Nessel said she’ll follow what’s turned up by Oakland County law enforcement. Nessel said earlier that an inquiry by her office would be truly independent as opposed to an investigation by someone hired by the district. Nessel said she’ll step back now as Oxford works toward recovering from the horrific event.   

“I want to give a little grace to the Oxford Community Schools right now,” she said during an online news conference. “They have a lot going on. I have every expectation that eventually they’ll want to work with us and cooperate. I think they want the same thing that we want.”

Despite the district’s rejection of her offer to be its third-party investigator, Nessel said Tuesday her office will review events that occurred before the mass shooting.

“What we can’t do is nothing. It’s not appropriate,” she said, calling last week’s attack that also wounded seven others a “tragedy on every level. I really do think it’s incumbent upon the Michigan Department of Attorney General and the top law enforcement official in the state to conduct a further review.”

Nessel said she’ll watch for leads developed by Oakland County officials and her office will cooperate with local law enforcement. She also said she intends to reach out to families and come up with a list of policy recommendations to help avert more school shootings.

“If anything good comes of it, it will be that we can revisit that those policies and see if we need to make changes in those policies,” she said.

Nessel said that should include more gun restrictions, especially making firearms less available to minors.  

The Associated Press contributed to this report.