Highland Park suspect initially charged with 7 counts of murder

Vice President Harris visited the city of Highland Park, Ill., on Tuesday evening, meeting with police officers and offering condolences to the community from herself and President Biden.

“There’s a lot of healing that’s going to have to happen that is both physical and emotional,” Harris said, urging community members to “hold each other tight” and seek support for the trauma they have faced.

She promised that federal assistance would continue to be provided and that the shooter would be brought to justice, “but it’s not going to undo what happened.”

She also emphasized her comments from earlier in the day, when she spoke before a National Education Association summit in Chicago, calling on Congress to “have the courage to act and renew the assault weapons ban” in light of the shooting.

“We’ve got to be smarter as a country in terms of who has access to what, in particular assault weapons,” she said in Highland Park. “And we’ve got to take this stuff seriously.”

Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.

On the day he died, 88-year-old Steve Straus asked his younger brother: Do you want to go to the parade?

His brother wasn’t interested, but off went Straus, who exhibited the energy of someone decades younger, according to his niece, Cynthia Straus.

“He was a ‘seize the day’ kind of guy,” said Cynthia, an actress in New York. “He worked out every day. He was remarkably healthy. He went to the symphony.”

Police on Tuesday said that along with Straus, six other adults died.

Straus was a financial adviser who rode the train from his home in Highland Park to his office in downtown Chicago.

He adored his wife, Linda, their two sons and their four grandchildren, Cynthia said, and talked to his 86-year-old brother — Cynthia’s father — “every day.”

“They were so close,” she said. “He was devoted to his family. And he never should have died this way.”

The revelation that the suspect in the Highland Park parade shooting had at least two previous encounters with law enforcement has raised new questions about how he was able to legally purchase his guns and whether more could have been done to prevent the massacre.

In September 2019, a family member told Highland Park police that the man, Robert E. Crimo III, had threatened to “kill everyone,” said Christopher Covelli, a spokesman for the Lake County Major Crime Task Force. Officers visited Crimo’s home and confiscated 16 knives, a dagger and a sword, but made no arrest, Covelli said on Tuesday, because they lacked probable cause. However, they notified Illinois State Police, he said.

Months later, in December, Crimo applied for a firearm owner’s identification card, the document required to possess a gun in Illinois. Because Crimo was under 21 at the time, state law required him to have the consent of a parent or guardian before he could own a firearm or ammunition. According to state police, which issues the cards, Crimo’s father sponsored his permit application.

State police had received a “clear and present danger report” on Crimo after the September incident, but because at the time he did not have a pending application or an active permit, known as a FOID card, the agency ruled there was no action it could take. When reviewing Crimo’s application less than six months later, state police officials once again decided there was nothing they could do — this time, the agency said, because Crimo had a sponsor.

“The subject was under 21 and the application was sponsored by the subject’s father,” Illinois State Police said in a statement. “Therefore, at the time of FOID application review in January of 2020, there was insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and deny the FOID application.”

In a subsequent statement, state police said Crimo had passed four federal background checks when purchasing his firearms and said the report from Highland Park police indicated he had told officers that he did not feel like hurting himself or others when they interviewed him in September 2019. At the time, Crimo’s father claimed the seized knives were his, and Highland Park police returned them that afternoon, state police said.

Officials on Tuesday did not say whether police confiscation of knives and other weapons should have been basis enough to deny Crimo’s application.

“Highland Park police notified the Illinois State Police,” Covelli said. “Where it goes from there, I don’t want to speak to it.”

At a news conference announcing the initial criminal charges against Crimo, Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said Illinois’ red-flag law, which allows loved ones to ask a court to temporarily remove guns from those deemed violent or threatening, is “very powerful.” Yet the law is rarely used.

“We must vastly increase awareness and education about this red-flag law,” Rinehart said.

Gabriella Cooperman, 22, overlapped with Robert E. Crimo III at Edgewood Middle school and Highland Park High School and regularly saw him at the deli run by Crimo’s father and uncle, a community hangout.

“He was always just in his own world,” she said. “He didn’t have many friends. He wasn’t that personable.”

She recalled often seeing Crimo during his early high school years, sitting in the corner of the deli, his long bangs hanging partially over his face. “He always gave weird, creepy vibes,” she said. “He had kind of a sulking-in-the-corner energy combined with ‘I’m watching you’ energy.”

Standing behind the counter at the deli were Crimo’s father and uncle. Crimo’s uncle was friendly and upbeat, Cooperman said, while Crimo’s father was more serious and closed-off. The deli recently closed, she said, to make way for the construction of an apartment complex.

Cooperman said she no longer saw Crimo at Highland Park High School after his sophomore year, which ended in 2017. In the yearbook book from that year, his chin-length black hair combed over to one side. Cooperman said his photo did not appear in the school’s yearbooks in subsequent years.

A spokeswoman for Township High School District 113 did not respond to requests for comment.

The additional charges that will be filed against the Highland Park shooting suspect will center on each victim, including those who were not physically harmed, a state official said Tuesday.

Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said he anticipates “dozens” of more charges to be filed against Robert E. Crimo III, centering on victims — including “psychological victims.”

“Separate from those seven lives that were ripped away, over two dozen other mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and neighbors were injured,” Rinehart said. “Hundreds, if not thousands, will be psychologically scarred by yesterday’s events.”

The forthcoming charges could include attempted murder, aggravated battery and aggravated discharge of a firearm, Rinehart said.

Crimo was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder on Tuesday. If convicted, Crimo could spend life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A GoFundMe drive supporting the toddler who lost both parents in the Highland Park shooting has raised more than $1 million as of Tuesday evening.

Two-year-old Aiden McCarthy’s parents, Irina and Kevin McCarthy, were killed Monday during the shooting at a July Fourth parade.

Irina Colon, one of the women who helped rescue Aiden from the parade, set up the GoFundMe account, writing that she established the fundraiser to support the boy and his caregivers.

“At two years old, Aiden is left in the unthinkable position; to grow up without his parents,” Colon’s GoFundMe post said. “Aiden will be cared for by his loving family and he will have a long road ahead to heal, find stability, and ultimately navigate life as an orphan.”

The Fourth of July parade was supposed to kick off a month full of events in Highland Park, Ill., including a world music festival and food truck feasts. But now these are canceled.

Though the residents of the Chicago suburb of 30,000 looked forward to community gatherings after two years of pandemic-related cancellations, Monday’s shooting left the town in too much shock and sorrow.

“The devastating attack at the City’s Fourth of July Parade was a horrific, heartbreaking incident for a close-knit community that values connections between neighbors and treasures opportunities to gather together,” said Amanda Civitello, the city’s communications manager, in a news release. “The City extends its deepest condolences to the families, friends, and loved ones of the victims.”

Adrienne Rosenblatt, 71, had just escaped the gunfire at the parade when she noticed a familiar face on a neighborhood watch website.

“I said to my neighbors here, I said, ‘This is Aiden!’” she recalled in an interview. “And they go, ‘Yeah, it is.’”

Rosenblatt is a longtime resident of the neighborhood where Kevin and Irina McCarthy lived for the past couple of years. She’s known 2-year-old Aiden his entire life. When she saw his picture, she went to the family’s house, where his grandparents were anxiously awaiting news.

“I said, ‘He’s at the police station,’” Rosenblatt said. “When I showed them the picture of Aiden, they were so grateful.”

She first met the McCarthys shortly after they moved in about two years ago, when she brought them mint chocolate chip brownies to welcome them to the neighborhood. Aiden was the couple’s only child, she said, and she remembers when Irina was pregnant.

Rosenblatt saw mother and son go on walks together. Sometimes his grandma would walk him to a nearby park to go on the swings. He would pet her dog, Lovie, with his mom’s encouragement.

On Tuesday afternoon, Rosenblatt found out that both of his parents had been killed in the shooting.

“How do they tell him?” she asked, shaking her head.