“These are just the first of many charges to be filed against Mr. Crimo, I want to stress that,” Rinehart said, adding that he envisions “dozens of more charges focused on each of the victims.”
Crimo has been in police custody since he was arrested Monday evening.
“Tomorrow morning at the Lake County Courthouse, we will ask a judge to detain Mr. Crimo without bail,” Rinehart said.
Attorney Thomas Durkin confirmed to CNN his portrayal of Crime.
Attorney Steve Greenberg has been hired to represent Crimo’s parents, Greenberg confirmed to CNN Tuesday evening in an email. The lawyer issued a statement on Twitter on behalf of the suspect’s parents.
“We are all mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and this is a terrible tragedy for many families, the victims, the parades, the community and ours. Our hearts, thoughts and prayers go to everyone,” the statement said. to read.
Police on Tuesday earlier identified six of the seven victims who died in the shooting.
Jennifer Banek, a Lake County forensic scientist, read the list of names during the press conference. The victims are as follows:
- Katherine Goldstein, 64, of Highland Park
- Irina McCarthy, 35, of Highland Park
- Kevin McCarthy, 37, of Highland Park
- Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63, of Highland Park
- Stephen Straus, 88, of Highland Park
- Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, of Morelos, Mexico
A seventh victim died at a hospital outside Lake County, Banek said.
A total of 45 people were killed or injured during the shooting, said Christopher Covelli, a spokesman for the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force.
The focus of the investigation over the past 36 hours has been the shooter, but it has now shifted to “the victims and those left behind,” Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said during the press conference.
The announcement of the names of the victims comes after investigators revealed that the alleged gunman may have planned the attack “for several weeks” and wore women’s clothing during the shooting to hide his identity and facial tattoos, and to help him walk away with the crowd he was in. fleeing after the shooting, Covelli said.
“He mingled perfectly with everyone else as they ran, almost like (if) he was also an innocent spectator,” Covelli said Tuesday morning at a news conference in front of the Highland Park police headquarters.
Covelli also revealed Tuesday that Crimo had two previous incidents with law enforcement. In April 2019, an individual contacted authorities about Crimo’s suicide attempt. Authorities spoke with Crimo and his parents, and the matter was handled by mental health professionals, Covelli said.
Then, in September 2019, a family member reported that Crimo threatened to “kill everyone” and had a collection of knives, Covelli said. Police removed 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from his residence. Highland Park police reported the incident to Illinois state police.
“At that time there was no probable cause for the arrest. There were no allegations that were signed by any of the victims,” Covelli said.
Shortly after the September incident, Crimo legally bought five firearms, a combination of rifles, a pistol and possibly a shotgun, between 2020 and 2021, according to Covelli. To buy firearms in Illinois, people need a firearms owner identification card (FOID). Crimo was under the age of 21, so he was sponsored by his father, state police said in a press release. Crimo’s request was not denied because at the time there were not “sufficient grounds to establish a clear and present danger.”
Investigators are still trying to determine the reason for Monday’s shooting, Covelli said.
Crimo, authorities believe, used a high-powered rifle “similar to an AR-15” to shoot more than 70 meats at a crowd from the roof of a business, which he accessed by the ladder of a fire escape, Covelli said.
Sounds of gunfire pierced the sunny parade just after 10 a.m. CT along the city’s Central Avenue, about 25 miles north of Chicago, sending hundreds of terrified dispersed attendees, abandoning prams, chairs and paraphernalia of the American flag on the streets. Witnesses described seeing horrified how the wounded stood up around him. Live updates: Suspect arrested
The carnage marks an already bloody American spring and summer: over the past 186 days, there have been more than 300 mass shootings in the United States, according to data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that makes a follow-up of these incidents.
“There are no words for the kind of evil that appears in a public celebration of freedom, hides on a rooftop and shoots innocent people with an assault rifle,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Monday. “It’s devastating that an American celebration has been shattered by our all-American plague.”
Details of what led investigators to believe the shooting was planned for weeks were not immediately provided.
After the shooting, Crimo went to his mother’s house in the area, and then took off with his mother’s car, Covelli said.
After police determined Crimo was an interested person in the investigation and released his information and the car they believed he was in, someone saw the vehicle at US 41 and called 911, Covelli said. .
A North Chicago police officer then saw the vehicle, waited for a backup, stopped the car Monday night near Lake Forest, Illinois, and arrested Crimo, authorities said.
The suspect legally bought the weapons in the Chicagoland area, according to police
In addition to the rifle used in the shooting, which authorities found abandoned near the scene of the shooting, officers also found a rifle inside the vehicle, Covelli said.
Crimo, a resident of the town of Highwood near Highland Park, had legally bought the two guns in the Chicagoland area, Covelli said, without giving further details.
Other firearms were found at Crimo Highwood’s residence, Covelli said.
Investigators have no information that the shooting was motivated by race, religion or any other state of protection, Covelli said.
Among the seven people killed, five adults died at the scene and one at the hospital, Lake County coroner Jennifer Banek said. It is not yet clear how old the sixth and seventh victims were.
One of the people killed was Jacki Sundheim, 63, according to a nearby synagogue where he was a congregant and staff member. Another was 78-year-old Nicolas Toledo, who had been visiting his family in Highland Park from Mexico, a Morelos state official told CNN.
Thirty-nine patients related to the shooting, including the person who died in a hospital, were treated at three hospitals in the NorthShore University health system, the system said Tuesday.
The injured were between 8 and 85 years old: four or five patients were children, Dr. Brigham Temple, the system’s medical director, said Monday.
Nine were still hospitalized Tuesday, aged between 14 and 70, according to system spokesman Jim Anthony. Eight of the nine suffered gunshot wounds, Anthony said. One was in critical condition Tuesday, Anthony said.
“We’re all a little shaken”
On Tuesday morning, a street in Highland Park was still full of party belongings that were quickly abandoned, and residents are struggling to accept what happened.
Three Central Avenue blocks in downtown Highland Park remained blocked by police tape. FBI agents walked in a row to comb the street for more evidence and lifted scattered grass chairs and other items left behind during the flight to a safe place.
A man who had fled the butcher shop unharmed with his children returned on Tuesday and found his eldest son’s wheelchair, which has special needs. On Monday they had left the wheelchair, and the little brother was carrying his brother, after the big one fell as they walked away from the shooting.
“We’re all a little shaken. It’s hard to believe this happened, and only (yesterday). And I think we’re all a little unstable and restless, (it’s) probably the best way to describe it,” the father said. Paul Toback told CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday.
Both inside and outside the recorded area, the belongings of visitors to the parade remained scattered on the floor. Among them: a pram, an ant-packed Dunkin Donuts iced coffee, a half-eaten noodle cup, a toy truck, sunscreen, water bottles, dog treats and a Sonic the Hedgehog stuffed toy .
‘Much more work to do’
Last year was the worst year on record since the Arms Violence Archive began tracking mass shootings in 2014. There were a total of 692 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2021, the organization says. non-profit.
The attack on Highland Park comes after several recent mass shootings that impacted the nation, including the racist attack of an 18-year-old in a New York supermarket that killed 10 and another 18-year-old shooting at a Texas school that left 19 students and two. dead teachers. In the wake of those massacres, President Joe Biden signed the first major federal gun safety legislation in decades, marking a major bipartisan breakthrough on one of the most controversial political issues in Washington.
Biden held a brief moment of silence at the White House Monday evening during a July fourth picnic, noting that he had spoken with Governor Pritzker and the mayor of Highland Park.
“There is much more work to be done and I will not give up fighting the epidemic of armed violence,” Biden said in a statement released Monday. Vice President Kamala Harris visited Highland Park on Tuesday after delivering a speech to the National Education Association in the early hours of the day.
“We are here for you and we are with you,” Harris said, adding that the administration would continue to provide federal assistance. “We need to be smarter as a country, in terms of who has access to what and, in particular, to assault weapons.”
In 2013, Highland Park had approved a local ban on semi-automatic firearms capable of accepting more than 10 rounds of ammunition, following a series of mass shooting incidents across the country.
On Tuesday, Mayor Rotering said Monday’s shooting showed the need for strict gun laws nationwide.
“I think it’s …