The Michigan’s Attorney General Office says it will take six months to review previous investigative materials into the 2021 Oxford High School attack before it can launch its own probe.

The office’s review of the Oxford school shooting has begun in earnest after it received a sizeable amount of materials from Oakland County officials in the prosecutor’s office and the sheriff’s department, according to AG spokeswoman Kimberly Bush.

“We have received over 2 terabytes of information and evidence from Oakland County. Because we were not a part of any of the original investigations, we are starting from scratch and anticipate that it will take us six months to review that data and get fully up to speed,” Bush said.

The shooter, a student at the school, fired his weapon 33 times in the Nov. 30, 2021 attack that killed Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; and Justin Shilling, 17, and wounding seven other people.

In November, Oxford families asked Attorney General Dana Nessel to launch a state-level investigation into the attack. Oxford families have called for a comprehensive examination of possible criminal conduct by school staff and failed policies that did not prevent the attack. They are demanding accountability, including criminal culpability of school employees.Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has proposed a supplemental appropriation for the current budget year that would add another $1 million to Nessel’s office to pay for a review of the shooting. Whitmer announced the proposal on Feb. 5 in her $83.5 billion spending plan for the next fiscal year.

Buck Myre, whose 16-year-old son Tate was killed in the violent gun attack, said he doesn’t believe the attorney general’s office needs that much time to review documents.

“I would expect two months maximum for the AG’s team to get their arms wrapped around the current work that has been done to understand the gaps that need to be filled in,” Myre said on Friday.

Last month, Nessel noted that other significant investigations by her office required extra funding, such as those involving Michigan State University’s handling of allegations against serial sexual abuser Larry Nassar; the Flint water crisis; and clergy abuse.

Previously, Nessel’s office had argued in part it could not investigate the Oxford shooting because the district’s school board refused her request to do so. Nessel’s department had maintained that her office needed the permission of the Oxford school board unless there was probable cause to believe a crime was committed.

On Nov. 18 that Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald issued a memo to Oxford families that the Michigan Attorney General’s Office had the authority to investigate the actions of Oxford school district employees “regardless of invitation” from its school board.

In her referral letter, McDonald said she supported the families’ calls for additional investigation to “answer questions that remain unanswered and to gather data and information that can be used to save future lives.” She said the investigation would “benefit our entire state, particularly our schools and our students.”

At the time, Nessel said she would need a referral to take on the case, which so far has resulted in criminal charges against the student killer and his parents. McDonald formally referred the shooting to the AG for investigation on Nov. 25.

In 2023, the company Guidepost Solutions performed an independent investigation of the attack for Oxford Community Schools, producing a 572-page report. The company, hired by the district to evaluate the school’s role in the attack, found that missteps and failures by Oxford’s former superintendent and two former members of his administration snowballed to allow the shooter to slip through the school’s threat assessment and suicide intervention systems.

Nessel has called the Guidepost document an “incomplete report.” She told reporters last month her office was focused on things that are “outstanding, that haven’t been done” and not “redoing the old investigation.”

Guidepost was hired by Oakland County government for a roughly $497,000 contract to perform a comprehensive after-action review of the emergency response to the shooting.

That review is expected in June.