He escaped a killer at Oxford High School. His fight for survival was only beginning
Orlando — Keegan Gregory secures the laces on his wakeboard boots as he prepares for a dock start on an overcast and windy day at a Florida watersports park.
With a signal from the cable operator and a click from a cable, Keegan pulls the tow rope into his body and launches into the air like a spring coil. He lands with a smack on the gray lake surface and is off, gliding across the water.
Sliding up ramps and trying out aerial tricks like the whirlybird, Keegan moves with ease on the looped overhead cable system that carries him around the Orlando Watersports Complex at 19 mph.
Turn by turn, loop after loop, the 18-year-old is carving new pathways in the water and in his brain as he works to heal, restarting his life 1,200 miles away from the terror that unfolded inside Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021.
The curly-haired teen with green eyes carries no visible scars from the violent gun attack that killed four students and injured seven others. The trauma lives there, deep inside his brain, the images and sounds from the nine minutes he was trapped inside a school bathroom where he watched one classmate's execution, faced the teenage killer and begged for his life.
On the open water in Orange County, there isn't room for those memories as Keegan flips upside down, teeters across cement ramps and grabs the tow rope behind his back in a twist, trying not to crash into the cold water.
Wakeboarding, Keegan told The Detroit News during an interview this spring, has become a daily practice, a part-time job and career aspiration for the power the sport gives the gun violence survivor over his thoughts.
"I grew up skating and skiing and like doing those board sports," Keegan said from his Florida home in Clermont, outside Orlando. "Wakeboarding has been another one of those things that, like, when I'm doing it, I don't think about anything else besides that and that adrenaline rush."
The News spent three days with Keegan and his family in Florida in March as they shared their journey of recovery and Keegan's plans to return May 15 to graduate from the very school where he almost died.
'How are we going to get out of this?'
Keegan was 15 years old when, after a routine lunch period, a mass shooting unfolded in the hallways of his sprawling Michigan high school. Keegan had stopped in the bathroom and soon began texting his parents, Chad and Meghan, explaining he was trapped there with another student, Justin Shilling, and the student gunman.
Keegan texted his family that he saw the gun, then wrote: "I JUST WATCHED HIM KILL SOMONE." The high school freshman who had been quietly hiding turned to face the killer and, in a decisive moment, ran for his life, escaping the bathroom alive. Justin did not.
Keegan's parents began looking for mental health help for their son within 24 hours of the shooting, as they pieced together how close to death Keegan had come from conversations with the police and media reports.
Along with talk therapy, Keegan began a specialized treatment called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR. The method involves moving the eyes a specific way while a person processes traumatic memories. EMDR treats mental health conditions that happen because of memories from traumatic events in one's past.
Both therapies were helping, Keegan told his parents in 2022. The varsity swimmer returned to Oxford High for his sophomore year. But most days, he was unable to stay in the same building where the attack occurred, texting his mother for early pickups after anxiety overcame him while walking to classes down the same hallways where the killer fired his weapon at least 33 times.
Meghan says Keegan that winter began taking skiing and snowboarding in a different direction, a dark one. He began flipping and trying out extremely dangerous tricks. One day, he face planted after one move and had to go to the emergency room, his face and lips torn. He was so swollen that he was unrecognizable.
"He said he didn't care if he lived or died at that point," Meghan said. "That was the thing. And he's like, 'I just don't care. I don't care if I survive anymore.'"
Meghan, 48, consumed hours documenting details of the attack, collecting media reports on the case, trying to fill holes in its timeline and seeking answers to unsolved questions by calling prosecutors and investigators. She attended school board meetings with families of slain and injured children.
As another new school year approached at Oxford High for Keegan, the Gregory family was unraveling. Keegan's siblings — Piper, Peyton, Bentley and Sawyer — had all experienced the shooting through their older brother and needed emotional support in different ways, Chad says. They, too, had trouble sleeping at night.
It became clear that attempts to help Keegan were failing. Meghan, whose background is in advertising, was sliding down legal rabbit holes, and the children were slipping away into their own corners. The family dynamic that held the family of seven together was no longer functioning with Keegan and Meghan inside it.
"Meghan was advocating for Keegan, doing all of those things, and Keegan was trying to mask and numb and be out, and he was putting himself in some really bad situations," said Chad, 47.
"I was in very deep sadness. She was in deep anger. And then we would switch," Chad said of him and his wife. "I said, 'How are we going to get out of this?' I've got to get everybody to where the only distractions are learning the new."
A hospitality company executive, Chad says he did what he thought he needed to do — even if it meant being the bad guy — and told the family in April that they were moving. He had taken a job in Florida, an opportunity he had not sought before but pursued after being approached in Michigan.
Chad framed the move as an opportunity for a fresh start for the family. Meghan and the kids were angry. They did not want to leave their friends, their teams, their town.
"I was like, OK, but I mean, we were really mad at him, like all of us resented him," Meghan said. "We were not fine. We were not healing. We were in a bad way."
Chad wanted to provide an experience that told his family: "Something bad can happen to you, you can all recenter and then grow." The alternative was sinking deeper into Oxford and the shadow of Nov. 30, 2021.
"My fear of staying was that we weren't going to grow … we were losing it," Chad said.
Palm trees and teen drama
The Gregory family left Michigan the Labor Day weekend of 2023, nearly two years after the Oxford shooting. Chad, five children and the family cat flew south, while Meghan packed the family's SUV with three dogs and a bearded dragon and drove down Interstate 75.
Meghan, known for her outspoken attitude and quick-witted humor, left last to deal with the movers. A neighbor found her alone in the garage before she left the house, where the family had grown up since 2012.
"She came into the garage and said, 'It's gonna be OK.' And I was thinking, I'm leaving my dream home, the place I've always called home ... " Meghan said. "I was devastated. And all my friends were there, and all my support. And we're moving to a town. I know no one."
Chad had spent time finding a new home before moving. Identifying a neighborhood where the family felt safe was a priority. The shooting had been upsetting to the entire family, even its youngest members, who waited at the door for their brother to come home that fateful night, and who at times still felt unsafe in their own home.
"I knew that there needed to be this security blanket, however I could provide it," Chad said.
Clermont provided that: a six-bedroom house in a gated neighborhood where security guards check visitor IDs before entering and residents must approve visitors. Meghan says it looked like Michigan, with its green rolling hills, numerous inland lakes and small-town charm in its quiet downtown.
That fall, the two youngest children, Sawyer and Bentley, enrolled in local public elementary and middle schools. Peyton started at a local public high school. Keegan and Piper, who are one year apart, enrolled at a Christian school that advertised itself as a safe, wholesome environment for kids from preschool to 12th grade.
Piper, a talented gymnast, could reenter gymnastics in Clermont, known for its sports training programs and facilities. Bentley joined the football team, Sawyer started competitive swim and Peyton, cheer.
As the kids started new schools, Meghan set up a new household and began ferrying the kids to practices and school events. She kept a watchful eye on Oxford from five states away, via media reports, texts with friends and social media posts, but began meeting neighbors on walks outside.
Keegan, who was 16, made friends with the next-door kids in Clermont. But surviving a school shooting was not something he shared with the new people he met.
"I just don't talk about it," Keegan said of the attack.
Halloween came for the Gregorys, along with costumes and candy, but it wasn't the same as Oxford, where the kids saw familiar faces at doorways and neighbors knew their names under makeup and costumes.
But the family was moving forward, slowly. Warmer weather meant being outside more. The trips to lakes and beaches, the palm trees in the schoolyard, all softened the initial blow. Or so it seemed.
But Keegan was not adjusting to his new school. As he made new friends, his parents could see that the teen could not connect with kids his age in Florida when it came to average adolescent drama.
Chad says Keegan was frank with his peers over their own drama, in one case telling them it was "stupid," which caused friction in relationships. Keegan began to withdraw and become depressed.
"Then he would feel caught up, and then he would feel really insecure, and then he would get into this spiral. And that spiral just got bigger and bigger," Chad said. "And then it led to suicidal thoughts, and 'I don't want to be here.'"
In December that year, Keegan returned to Michigan to speak as a victim at the Oxford High killer’s sentencing. He worked with his Michigan therapist to prepare a statement that would allow him to articulate important statements — that the killer was not going to ruin him or his life.
He spoke in an Oakland County courtroom and returned home. After that trip, he declined quickly, his mother said.
"He was isolating, and he was numbing using substances; he was mostly isolating. He was hating school," Chad said. "From Keegan's point of view, everyone was very sheltered … what felt big to them was very small to him.”
Four months into the family's move to Florida, Keegan was a wreck. The fresh start had failed.
Christmas in Florida
That December, just days before Christmas, Chad said he got Keegan off the couch and out of the house. He told Keegan in a coffee shop that he and his mother wanted to help him, but they were not equipped to provide what the teen needed. He told Keegan that the teen had choices to make.
"We played out his choices, where he could turn this to a really dark path, and he'd have every reason to do it. He'd have every excuse," Chad said.
Keegan, who had stopped working out and going to school, listened. Chad reminded his eldest son that hurting himself meant hurting those left behind.
"It's not just you, right? Suicide is a big deal because you're not leaving yourself, you're leaving all of us, right, and your siblings," Chad said.
Keegan was agreeable to going somewhere to get help. Chad and Meghan had spoken to a Florida neighbor whose daughter underwent intensive mental health treatment at a facility in the state. A residential center meant Keegan had to live away from home for at least three months while he got mental health treatment.
Meghan and Chad had resisted taking Keegan to the emergency room because they knew he needed therapy, not hospitalization. Chad says he could see his son was desperate for help, desperate for a solution that would stop the images in his head and the panic that spread through his body.
Chad says he did not want Keegan to feel he had to endure the aftermath of the Oxford tragedy by himself.
"Yeah, you got played some terrible cards, and yet, you're in a much better position than a lot of people coming out of that are in," Chad said he told Keegan. "And you have a bit of responsibility in what happens next."
Keegan committed to going to the treatment center.
With the Christmas tree aglow in white lights and rose gold decorations with ivory and green accents, Chad gathered all five children together and told them Keegan was going away to get help. They all got into the car to drive Keegan to the center, roughly two hours and 15 minutes away. Meghan, who had COVID, had to isolate and could not make the trip.
Together, they walked Keegan in, and the staffers began processing him. They left Keegan to say goodbye to his family.
'This is all I have'
Family First, the facility for teen boys where Keegan received inpatient treatment, resembles a traditional house with two main units. There were bunk beds and picnic tables for each house, which typically has between seven and 12 male residents, with a common area for schoolwork and group therapy.
Some kids had substance abuse issues, others were working through trauma. Some were bouncing from facility to facility, Keegan said. His house was called the Cove. The change was stark at first, he said.
"It was horrible. I despised it. Like, I did not want to be there at all," Keegan said.
Keegan knew living at the Cove meant he could get the help he needed, the help he wanted. It also meant doing the work, not like before in Oxford, where he would say what he thought therapists wanted to hear so he could get back to his friends.
"The second I got into any room, I would, like, immediately think of a way to get out if something were to happen," said Keegan of how he walked through life post-attack. "Or think of all the possibilities that could happen and how I could avoid them. And like, my mind was constantly running, and then I was overly exhausted."
At night, when he was in bed and should have been sleeping, his mind raced.
"I remember for the first few months after the shooting, all I would hear, any time I would hear my siblings go down to get food, I would think there's someone in the house, and I would have these immediate panic attacks. And it was just happening over and over again," Keegan said.
The EMDR that Keegan practiced in Oxford meant revisiting the worst day of his life, but Keegan says he did try the steps. He tried to work through what his therapist asked him to do there, just weeks after the attack.
"I technically got through it, but I wasn't completely honest going through it. I was just like, ‘no part of me wants to be here, like, just let me go home and hang out with my friends,'" said Keegan of therapy in Oxford after the attack. "So I just, like, would kind of lie, kind of cheat my way through it."
In Florida, Keegan still carried a fear that something bad was going to happen again, that he could be hurt or put back in danger, he says. His mind went to the worst possible scenario in every situation. Panic attacks started again in his new environment, and he struggled to find his place in Florida, among his peers, among his thoughts. Oxford was really never that far away.
In rehab at The Cove, Keegan began intensive individual therapy and group therapies. In time, he had a regular private session every day and up to three group meetings every day. Every weekend, his family had a therapy session with him via video.
Keegan began EMDR work again at the Cove about a month and a half into therapy there. It was different this time, he said. He knew he had been given an opportunity to do the work if he wanted to.
"If I tried to fake it, then I would have to go back, or I would have to be back in therapy when I get home," he said. "So this is the best opportunity that I have. And so I was as honest as I could be. I actually talked about, like, how I was feeling, and not just what the therapist wanted to hear."
Revisiting trauma
That meant going back to the day of the 2021 attack.
Keegan heard gunshots ringing out inside his school while he was in the boys' bathroom. Justin, a senior, told Keegan to crouch atop a toilet so he could hide, while Justin stood nearby in the same stall. Keegan began texting his family for help. He and Justin agreed they would run once the killer moved away from them.
Keegan then heard the bathroom door open, and footsteps. He then heard the shooter reload his gun and “cock it back” as the boys hid in silence. The killer then kicked the stall door open and saw both boys hiding.
At first, Ethan Crumbley did nothing but stare at the boys and then walk away from them. That’s when Keegan saw the gun.
Keegan and Justin began begging for their lives as the killer held them at gunpoint. The killer ordered Justin to step outside first. Justin complied. A gunshot rang out. As Justin lay on the floor, Keegan said he felt at that moment his fate was sealed.
"I mean, I remember once I saw that Justin died, I was like, 'OK, I'm not living no matter what I do,'" Keegan recalled in March, at his dining room table in Florida with his dogs at his feet. "Because we were like, begging. And I was like, I'm not making it out alive, like he already took that step. So all I knew was that I could, I could at least try."
Keegan found an opportunity and took it.
"And then the second he, like, took the gun, kind of away from me, I went behind his back and just pushed the door open and just ran," Keegan said.
Keegan's therapists in Florida told Meghan and Chad that their son, despite his early therapy in Oxford, had never actually processed what happened to him that day. They learned that doing EMDR therapy too soon can be harmful. Keegan began that therapy three days after the attack.
Visions of the bathroom, more than two years later, kept reappearing in Keegan's brain, and he kept fighting them. Keegan told his mother one night in Florida that he hated those visions.
"'Mom, if I have to keep seeing these visions ... I don't want to live like this,'" Meghan recalled her son saying.
Keegan worked with two therapists, one who used EMDR in one-on-one sessions and another who helped the teen build coping mechanisms for his post-traumatic stress disorder, with which he had been diagnosed earlier.
Much of what Keegan has struggled with has manifested in panic attacks that strike at night and during the day. They strike at home and at places that are new, where larger crowds have gathered. One of the techniques he practices is to slow everything down by taking a look at his five senses and what he is experiencing.
"It's almost like when right after the shooting, when I did have a panic attack, or like anxiety, I felt like I was back in the moment, and nothing would, could, calm me down," Keegan said. "I would just be freaking out, like, nonstop shaking and whatnot. And then I am, I kind of had to realize where I was and that I was completely OK."
An open mind
In rehab, the experience was a mix of daily work on his mental health and plenty of downtime when he played guitar, built Lego models and played cards. He had about two hours of schoolwork a day. He also made a friend there.
Every morning, Keegan said the Serenity Prayer. It was something his dad taught him at home before coming to the Cove.
Weekends were open for the boys at the Cove, for outings like paintballing, go-karting and wakeboarding. The first time Keegan wakeboarded was in West Palm Beach near the treatment center with a group of teen boys from the Cove. His first attempt, he fell flat on his face off the dock. On the third try, he was able to get up, stay up and make his way around the loop, even hitting the jump ramp a few times.
The boys had no teacher. You had to try to figure it out on your own, Keegan said.
Meghan and Chad would get time with Keegan on the weekends and could take him off-site for a few hours. Keegan always asked to go wakeboarding. He ended up at Sharkwake Park in West Palm Beach, owned by Greg Norman Jr., son of the renowned pro golfer.
"And then when I went, we had a completely open park because it was in the middle of a school day, nobody was coming, and I pretty much got like a private lesson," Keegan said. "The owner of the park, Greg Norman Jr., he ended up like giving me these full private lessons and teaching me how to ride and riding doubles with me."
Balancing the world
In March 2024, Keegan returned home to Clermont after 90 days of day treatment. His therapists recommended he come home and not continue another round of inpatient therapy, Meghan said.
"He was ready," she said.
His first day back, Keegan knew he needed something to do — right away. He recalled a waterpark outside Orlando for wakeboarding and drove there from home, about 45 minutes. He hopped on a wakeboard and started circling the lake on the cable system.
Over the next few weeks, Keegan began to see friends again; neighborhood kids came over. On April 5, 2024, Keegan decided to venture out with friends to an event called First Fridays in Clermont, with food trucks and a lot of other teenagers. It was one of the first moments he was back in a large crowd. He said he was ready.
"There's just a ton of people and lots of stuff going on," said Keegan of the evening.
Unfortunately, violence struck at the event. A fight broke out, and a teenage girl stabbed another girl in the neck while he was there. Keegan said the incident rattled him for a while, but he reminded himself that incidents happen anywhere. He cannot control that. He can control how he reacts.
Another unsettling incident followed. On Oct. 31, 2024, in downtown Orlando, he was at a nightclub with friends. By midnight, he decided to leave and called his mom on the way home. A shooting occurred outside the same club about 30 minutes after he had left, he found out later.
"It's just like a constant reminder that, like, that stuff can happen anywhere, and it's within the world, so I kind of have to do my best to avoid it the best I can," Keegan said. "But if I try to avoid it all the time, then I'm just held captive in my house. So it's kind of like a nice balance. I've got to figure out."
At the Orlando Watersports Complex, where he practices, Keegan got a job for the summer last June. The owner asked him to work as a summer camp counselor teaching kids how to wakeboard. He ended up loving the job, and soon his brother, Bentley, joined him for wakeboarding outings.
Last summer, Keegan had some decisions to make about returning to school. He was 17 years old and had credits from two years at Oxford High School, from the religious school and from online classes he took while in rehab.
He was approaching his senior year of high school.
He wanted to graduate and finish high school — but did not want to attend in person. Attending school online was the only path he could see. And the only people he wanted to experience that milestone with were in Michigan, specifically at Oxford High School.
Keegan told his parents he wanted to walk the stage and graduate with his childhood friends in Oxford. That meant reenrolling in Oxford Community Schools. The district helped the family reenroll Keegan in August and set him on a path to graduate.
"Being enrolled back at Oxford meant that I was able to walk the stage with my friends, like I pretty much grew up with these people," Keegan said in March.
Chad and Meghan say they were surprised but supportive. At home in Clermont, Keegan took classes online as an Oxford student and worked toward an Oxford high school diploma on an individualized education plan that gives students flexibility in the courses they take.
While he worked on online classes at Oxford High, Keegan started reconnecting with neighborhood kids in Florida and making new friends wakeboarding. He began to attend concerts, go to dance clubs and to the beach.
That included attending a Homecoming dance with a date and a large group of local friends who attend a local high school. The kids, dressed in tuxedos and stilettos, came to the Gregorys' house, where they took photos and left together as a group.
In less than an hour, Keegan called Meghan and said he was coming home — too many people, too loud, too much.
Going 'home'
Keegan visited Oxford in late December to see friends and ski. He videotaped deer moving around north Oakland County, where he skied with his friends from Oxford High. He remembered how much he missed this part of Michigan: snow and deer.
By January, he had taken enough online courses to accumulate the necessary credits to graduate with a Michigan high school diploma. By February, he learned he could graduate with Oxford's class of 2025 on May 15 at Pine Knob.
Keegan says he looks forward to walking the stage with his classmates, the same kids he has known since kindergarten, the same 10 boys he has kept texting with from Florida and visiting in Michigan for ski trips in the winter.
"Going home feels amazing because when I see the people that I know have also gone through this, and I haven't been able to talk to them or see how they've been doing in a long time, to see what they're doing ... is amazing. They're doing great," Keegan said. "They are my best friends. I love them."
Meanwhile, in Florida, nearly every day, Keegan wakeboards, whether it's for work, practice or teaching Bentley some new tricks and filming him with a GoPro.
Chad says wakeboarding has become medicinal for his son.
"He will tell you ... wakeboarding is fantastic, but he also identifies it as almost an addiction," Chad said. "Like he knows when he has not done it enough, or when he's having a bad day, and he's like 'I just want to go wakeboard,' like he knows it's a crutch."
When he is not at the wakeboard park, he is home in Clermont, talking to his mother and siblings in the kitchen, asking to borrow a sweatshirt from his sister, playing with the smallest family dog, who likes to lie in Keegan's arms like a baby. Keegan and Chad play pickleball together some nights, horse around the pool in the clubhouse or go to the movies.
After 18 months in Florida, Meghan says the family no longer has the constant reminders of the attack, from the "Oxford Strong" signs to the sad looks in the grocery store. They don't have to drive by the high school and think about what happened inside.
Chad and Meghan have been married for 19 years. Each parent has handled the attack and life after in different ways. Chad dives into work, is on the road every week and takes care of family needs when he is home — but has declined seeking talk therapy for himself. He suffered a heart attack in August at the age of 46.
Meghan took up a therapeutic doodling method called Zentangle in Michigan as the criminal cases unfolded in Oakland County and framed her work in the hallway of the family's Florida home at Chad's suggestion. She still talks to her Oxford friends every week and sometimes listens to Oxford board of education meetings online, where her friends in Oxford are still advocating for a safe environment for the students.
Many Oxford families, like the Gregorys, are still searching for the truth and transparency of who is responsible for the shooting and what unfolded that horrific day in the school.
"I need to be done asking, because clearly no one wants to tell me. I need to let the attorneys do their job and just stop going down that hole because it hurts every time," Meghan said of pending litigation.
Future therapist
Keegan wants to attend the University of Central Florida this fall and study psychology to become a therapist and help others going through trauma and PTSD. He wants to help others understand what has happened to them and then move past it, like he has.
"I think it really came when I was in the treatment center, because that was, like, life-changing to me, like the way that these therapists were with all these people and trying to help every single one of us through here," Keegan said.
"And they were so calm-minded about the situations and so mature about it, and being able to like assess everything, no problem. Even when we were in group settings and like, somebody would act out or something would happen, they were able to like assess the situation and calm it down and ... I love that."
Keegan says he knows his mental health work is not over. He could have a trigger again, and he is likely to continue therapy. In April, he returned to treatment. That same month, a shooting at Florida State University killed two people and injured five. It was 236 miles away, but still close to home. Chad often visits the campus for business.
"There's always going to be something that could happen. So I don't think it'll ever be done," Keegan said.
The Gregorys say Keegan will need emotional support going forward, with graduation and adult life on the horizon. Life has to be one step at a time for him. His sisters have plans for college.
This summer, Keegan will work at the waterpark, but he wants to focus on going pro, finding a sponsor and attending wakeboarding events around the world, including one in London. The teen says he feels peaceful again in his life, mostly while wakeboarding. He can avoid most drama. He can't recall the last time he had a panic attack.
Keegan struggles with survivor's guilt. He uses the Serenity Prayer with its message of grace, resilience and self-awareness to guide him through the challenges of navigating life after a school attack.
"I mean it still sucks every time it comes up, because I'm alive and he isn't," said Keegan, referring to Justin Shilling. "Actually, the Serenity Prayer, it has a section on (being) able to accept the things I cannot change, or God grant me the serenity to be able to accept the things I cannot change. And I've kind of lived by that."
jchambers@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: He escaped a killer at Oxford High School. His fight for survival was only beginning
