UPDATED: July 6, 2022 1:10 p.m.
WAUKEGAN, Ill. (Reuters) – The man accused of killing seven people and wounding dozens of others at an Independence Day parade outside of Chicago admitted to authorities that he carried out the shooting, a prosecutor said on Wednesday during the suspect’s first court appearance.
Robert Crimo, the 21-year-old suspect facing seven counts of first-degree murder, appeared at the bond hearing via a video link from jail, two days after the attack in Highland Park, Illinois. Dressed in black and wearing shoulder length hair, Crimo was denied bail by Judge Theodore Potkonjak.
Ben Dillon, a county prosecutor, told the court that the suspect confessed to the July Fourth attack after he was apprehended. There was no plea entered at the hearing. Crimo spoke only briefly to confirm that he did not have a lawyer. A public defender was appointed to represent him.
“He does pose, in fact, a specific and present threat to the community,” the judge said in ordering that Crimo remain jailed.
Highland Park is the latest American community forced to come to grips with a spasm of mass gun violence. Monday’s bloodshed was the latest in a string of mass shootings that have renewed debate about U.S. gun violence, including a May 24 attack in which 19 schoolchildren and two teachers were killed in Uvalde, Texas. On May 14, 10 people were slain in a supermarket in a predominately Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York.
Authorities said on Tuesday that Crimo planned the Illinois attack for weeks before climbing up to his sniper’s perch on a rooftop from an alley and firing more than 70 rounds using a semiautomatic rifle into parade spectators before making his getaway dressed in women’s clothing and makeup to cover his facial tattoos.
At least seven people were killed and more than three dozen were hospitalized with gunshot wounds and other injuries after the shooting.
The suspect was arrested later on Monday when he was stopped by police at the wheel of his mother’s car, which authorities said he had driven to Wisconsin and back to Illinois following the shooting.
A Smith & Wesson semiautomatic rifle, similar to an AR-15, used in the shooting was found at the scene, and Crimo had a similar weapon in his mother’s car when arrested, according to county prosecutors.
If convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder, Crimo would face a mandatory life prison sentence without the possibility of parole, Eric Rinehart, the state’s attorney for Lake County, said in announcing the charges on Tuesday.
Rinehart said more charges are expected against Crimo, whose next court appearance is scheduled for July 28.
In a news briefing following the bond hearing, Rinehart said authorities questioned the suspect after reading him his legal rights including the right to an attorney.
“He went into details about what he had done,” Rinehart said. “He admitted to what he had done.”
Police said they had no immediate evidence of any anti-Semitic or racist basis for the attack. Highland Park has a large Jewish community. Investigators were reviewing videos Crimo had posted on social media containing violent imagery.
Crimo’s parents said in a statement released by their lawyer that they are requesting privacy.
“We are all mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and this is a terrible tragedy for many families, the victims, the paradegoers, the community, and our own,” they said. “Our hearts, thoughts, and prayers go out to everybody.”
RED FLAG LAW
Sergeant Chris Covelli, a spokesperson for the Lake County Sheriff’s office, said Crimo legally purchased five guns in all, rifles and pistols, despite having come to law enforcement’s attention on two prior occasions for alleged behavior suggesting he might harm himself or others.
The first instance was an April 2019 emergency 911 call reporting Crimo had attempted suicide, followed in September of that year by a police visit regarding alleged threats “to kill everyone” that he had directed at family members, Covelli said.
Police responding to the second incident seized a collection of 16 knives, a dagger and a sword amassed by Crimo in his home, though no arrest was made as authorities at the time lacked probable cause to take him into custody, Covelli said.
Crimo slipped past the safeguards of an Illinois “red flag” law designed to prevent people deemed to have violent tendencies from getting guns.
State police said that the knives were returned to the family later the day they were confiscated after the father told authorities they were his and stored in his son’s closet for safekeeping. State police acknowledged having received a report from local authorities declaring Crimo a “clear and present danger” after the alleged September 2019 threat to his family.
State police said they closed the matter after determining that Crimo at that time had neither a gun-owner’s identification card to revoke nor an application to deny. Neither of the 2019 incidents surfaced in four background checks conducted during his subsequent firearms purchases, they added.
(This story corrects spelling of Eric Rinehart’s name in paragraphs 10 and 11)
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien and Tom Polansek; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh, Jonathan Allen, Tyler Clifford, Christopher Gallagher, Christopher Walljasper and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Jonathan Allen and Steve Gorman; Editing by Will Dunham, Robert Birsel and Chizu Nomiyama)
UPDATED: July 6, 2022 11:18 a.m.
(Reuters) – An eighth victim has died from injuries suffered in the shooting at an Independence Day parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, media reports said on Wednesday.
Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, was pronounced dead on Wednesday morning at Evanston Hospital, a reporter for the local NBC affiliate said on Twitter.
(Reporting by Chris Gallagher and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Tim Ahmann)
UPDATED 6:42 p.m.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. (Reuters) – The man accused of opening fire with a rifle from a rooftop onto a crowd of people watching a July Fourth parade near Chicago, turning the holiday celebration into another national tragedy, was charged on Tuesday with seven counts of first-degree murder.
If convicted, the suspect, 21-year-old Robert E. Crimo III, would face a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, Illinois states attorney Eric Reinhart said in announcing the charges at a news conference.
Reinhart said the first-degree murder charges would be followed by dozens of additional charges before the investigation is over. The prosecutor said he would ask that Crimo remain held in custody without bail at the suspect’s first court appearance, scheduled for Wednesday.
It was not immediately clear if Crimo had a lawyer.
Authorities said Crimo had planned the attack for weeks and had come to authorities’ attention at least twice before on reports that he threatened suicide or harm to others, local officials said on Tuesday.
Authorities said the suspect fired more than 70 rounds from a rooftop at random onto people watching Monday’s parade in Highland Park, Illinois, and then made his getaway dressed in a disguise to blend in with the panic-stricken crowd, authorities said on Tuesday.
In addition to the seven people killed in the gunfire, the attack sent more than three dozen other people to area hospitals for treatment of gunshot wounds and other injuries, authorities said.
After fleeing the scene, the suspect drove to Wisconsin and back to Illinois before he was pulled over and arrested later on Monday, according to Sergeant Chris Covelli, a spokesperson for the Lake County Sheriff’s office.
At a late-afternoon news briefing on Tuesday, Covelli cited two previous encounters between Crimo and law enforcement – an April 2019 emergency-911 call reporting he had attempted suicide and another in September of that year regarding alleged threats he had directed at family members.
Police responding to the second incident seized a collection of 16 knives, a dagger and a sword amassed by Crimo in his home, though no arrest was made as authorities at the time lacked probable cause to take him into custody, Covelli said.
“There were no complaints that were signed by any of the victims,” Covelli explained.
Police revised the confirmed casualty toll from the shooting with the death of a seventh person who succumbed to his injuries on Tuesday.
Among the dead were Nicholas Toledo, a grandfather from Mexico in his 70s celebrating with his family among the flag-waving crowds at Monday’s parade, and Jacki Sundheim, a teacher at a nearby synagogue.
Crimo, who has distinctive facial tattoos apparently tried to conceal his identity on Monday as he made his getaway, Covelli told reporters.
“He blended right in with everybody else as they were running around, almost as if he was an innocent spectator as well,” Covelli said. The suspect fled to his mother’s house nearby, and later borrowed his mother’s car.
The shooting took place in a neighborhood with a large Jewish population, but police had no evidence of any anti-Semitic or racist basis. Investigators were reviewing videos he had made filled with violent imagery.
The suspect used a high-powered rifle for the attack, similar to an AR-15, which he dropped at the scene.
He had a similar rifle in his mother’s car, which he was driving when taken into custody by police, and owned other guns, all of which were bought legally in Illinois, officials said. In all, Crimo had purchased five firearms, including rifles and handguns.
‘STILL REELING’
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said the community of 30,000 was still in shock.
“This tragedy should have never arrived at our doorsteps,” she told NBC News. “As a small town, everybody knows somebody who was affected by this directly and, of course, we are all still reeling.”
President Joe Biden ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff in mourning until sunset on Saturday.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month asserted a constitutional right to carry weapons in public in a ruling that made it easier for pro-gun groups to overturn modern gun regulations. It has since thrown out a lower court ruling upholding Maryland’s ban on assault weapons.
A recent string of deadly mass shootings, including an attack that left 19 school children and two teachers dead in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, just 10 days after 10 Black people were slain in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, has renewed U.S. debate about gun safety.
Congress last month passed its first major federal gun reform in three decades, providing federal funding to states that administer “red flag” laws intended to remove guns from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others.
The law does not ban sales of assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines but does take some steps on background checks by allowing access to information on significant crimes committed by juveniles.
Rotering, the city’s mayor, said she knew the suspect when he was a little boy and a Cub Scout and she was a Cub Scout leader.
“What happened? How did somebody become this angry, this hateful?” she said. “Our nation needs to have a conversation about these weekly events involving the murder of dozens of people with legally obtained guns.”
The suspect’s father, Bob Crimo, ran Bob’s Pantry and Deli in Highland Park for at least 18 years, according to a Chicago Tribune business profile. Bob Crimo closed the deli in 2019 before he unsuccessfully ran against Rotering for mayor of Highland Park.
Online social media posts written by the suspect or his rapper alias, “Awake The Rapper,” often depicted violent images or messages.
One music video posted to YouTube under Awake The Rapper showed drawings of a stick figure holding a rifle in front of another figure spread on the ground.
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien and Tom Polansek; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh, Jonathan Allen, Tyler Clifford, Christopher Gallagher, Christopher Walljasper and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Jonathan Allen and Steve Gorman; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Bill Berkrot)
Comments