HIGHLAND PARK, Illinois — An Illinois man charged with murdering seven people during a Fourth of July parade was jailed without bail on Wednesday as questions mounted over why he was allowed to buy guns despite alarming police -encounters.
The man, Robert E. Crimo III, 21, was charged with climbing a roof on Monday and using a high-powered rifle to spray dozens of bullets on the parade route in a Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois. The police said that Mr. Crimo had legally purchased the weapon after authorities received two disturbing reports about him.
In April 2019, someone called the police to say he had attempted suicide, and a few months later officers seized several of his knives after a relative reported that Mr Crimo planned to “kill everyone”. Months after those encounters, Mr Crimo’s father sponsored his son’s application for a state license required to own guns.
that mr. Crimo’s when he was approved for that license, and that he soon purchased several guns, including at least two rifles, cast doubt on the application and strength of Illinois’ firearms laws.
While the state’s gun laws are some of the strictest in the country, they haven’t stopped Mr Crimo from legally arming himself. Prosecutors said Mr Crimo bought the Smith & Wesson semiautomatic rifle used in the attack in 2020, the year after the knife was seized.
Mr Crimo, who appeared on video in a Lake County courtroom on Wednesday, told District Court Judge Theodore Potkonjak that he did not have a lawyer. A public defender, Gregory Ticsay, said Mr Crimo had no money to pay for bail, but he gave little other information about his client.
In court, Ben Dillon, a prosecutor, described in great detail how officials say the attack unfolded Monday. He said Mr Crimo used a fire escape to climb onto a roof in the center of town. There, Mr. Dillon said, the gunman opened fire, emptied a magazine of 30 bullets, and another, and placed a third magazine in it. Officials recovered 83 shell casings, Dillon said.
Mr. Crimo then left the roof and fled down an alley, dropping the gun along the way, which was soon traced to him by federal officials.
Mr Dillon said Mr Crimo confessed to the shooting after his arrest on Monday night. Crimo told investigators he had worn women’s clothing and covered his neck tattoos with makeup to blend in with the crowd, the prosecutor said.
Hours after the shooting, authorities searched for the gunman. Lake County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli said investigators believed Mr. Crimo fled to Madison, Wisconsin after the attack, but then returned to Illinois, where he was arrested. Chief Covelli said police believed Mr. Seeing a public holiday in Madison, Crimo considered using a second rifle he was carrying in the car to carry out another shooting there, but decided against it.
The sequence of events in Highland Park – in which police were told of a troubled young man, someone who later acquired guns and was accused of using them to kill – was not unique. In the 2018 Parkland, Florida high school massacre, the FBI received tips about the person who pleaded guilty in the case, Nikolas Cruz, before the shooting. And a judge ruled that the air force was largely responsible for a mass shooting at a Texas church in 2017 for failing to enter the shooter’s domestic violence conviction into a federal database.
Monday’s attack wasn’t the first to raise questions about vulnerabilities in Illinois’ strict gun laws, which require a license to own a firearm, and include a “red flag” provision that allows law enforcement officers to seize guns. from people who are considered dangerous.
A man convicted of killing four people at a Waffle House restaurant in Tennessee in 2018 had previously turned in his guns to police in his Illinois hometown. But those weapons, including the AR-15-style rifle used in the attack, were returned to the gunman’s father, officials said at the time.
Red flag laws also came under scrutiny in 2019, when one man killed five people at a factory in Aurora, Illinois, where he worked. That man, who died in a shootout with police, had been banned from possessing a weapon for five years, but continued to possess one.
In Highland Park, officials said Mr. Crimo none Firearms Owner Identification Card at that time, in 2019, officers seized 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from his home. They said they believed he had bought several weapons in the years since, including the one used on Monday and another that was in his car when he was arrested. Those weapons were legally purchased by Mr. Crimo in Illinois, officials said, after he applied for and received a gun owner’s card from state police.
A spokeswoman for Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat who supports gun laws, declined to answer questions Tuesday about whether the governor believed the state’s laws had worked as intended in the Highland Park case. He released a statement calling for stricter gun laws and greater awareness of existing restrictions.
“Unfortunately, every time there is a mass shooting, it serves as a stark reminder that our gun laws often fall short of the strict standards that feel like common sense to most Americans,” the governor said.
Mr. Pritzker’s office sent questions about Mr. Crimo’s case to state police, who defended how they handled it. Referring to the firearms owner’s card with an acronym, the state police statement said, in part, that “at the time of the assessment of the FOID application in January 2020, there was insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and the deny FOID application. †
State police said Mr Crimo’s father sponsored his application for the permit. Steven Greenberg, an attorney representing the father, acknowledged that the father had done this and said there were possible explanations. Mr Greenberg said his client did not believe there was a problem, and may not understand what happened to the knife attachment because it did not happen in his home. “It was perfectly legal,” he said of sponsoring the gun license.
State police said the father recovered the knives seized from his son by Highland Park Police later the same day. The father told officers he owned the knives, state police said.
Investigators said they believed Mr Crimo acted alone during the shooting. Prosecutors declined to say Wednesday whether they were considering charges against members of Mr Crimo’s family.
As the lawsuit in the case began, Highland Park residents continued to mourn the deaths of their neighbors on Wednesday.
The victims included Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, who had recently returned to Highland Park from Mexico, and who went to the parade with his family despite not wanting to; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63, a beloved employee of a local synagogue who was called “a beautiful ray of light” by a friend; Stephen Straus, a financial advisor who, at age 88, still took the train every day to his office at a brokerage firm in Chicago; Katherine Goldstein, 64; Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, of the nearby Waukegan suburb; and Irina and Kevin McCarthy, ages 35 and 37, a couple who left behind a toddler son.
Mitch Smith reported from Highland Park, and Robert clarifies from Waukegan, Illinois. Adam Goldman† Michael Levenson and Luke Vander Ploeg reporting contributed.