A 24-year-old man who shot and killed a slew of people at a 2022 Fourth of July parade in a suburb north of Chicago was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on April 24.
After survivors and relatives of the deceased shared emotional impact statements, Robert E. Crimo III was handed seven consecutive sentences of life in prison by Lake County Judge Victoria Rossetti at the request of prosecutors.
“He’s always known that he was facing life in prison,” Crimo’s public defender, Gregory Ticsay, said. “He has spared this community the lengthy trial.”
Partygoers were attending an Independence Day celebration in Highland Park when Crimo opened fire, shooting 83 bullets over 40 seconds, killing seven and injuring dozens more. Families fled the parade in a panic.
Highland Park is about an hour away from Chicago and is home to about 30,000 people.
“This court has absolutely no words that could adequately describe and capture the horror and pain that was inflicted on July 4th,” Rossetti said. “[He] has a complete disregard for human life and is irretrievably depraved, permanently incorrigible, irreparably corrupt and beyond any rehabilitation.”
Although law enforcement officials have said Crimo confessed to the Highland Park massacre, his defense panel has said that a private lawyer hired by his family was outside the police station after the shooting and that investigators unconstitutionally prevented the lawyer’s access to the defendant.
However, Rossetti argued that in the video, Crimo is visibly saying he didn’t want to stop the police interview to speak to a lawyer.
“I walked up the stairs, jumped on the roof and opened fire,” Crimo said at the time.
Crimo has been sporadic in his court appearances, which has delayed his proceedings.
In the past, he avoided attending hearings but changed his mind this week just as Rosetti was handing down his sentence. As a result, Rossetti stayed the proceedings on Thursday until Crimo could be brought to court.
Crimo’s victims on that day ranged from the elderly to an 8-year-old boy named Cooper Roberts, who is now paralyzed from the waist down.
Those killed in the attack were Katherine Goldstein, 64; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63; Stephen Straus, 88; Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78; Eduardo Uvaldo, 69; and married couple Kevin McCarthy, 37, and Irina McCarthy, 35.
“This was his evil plan,“ Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said. ”He intended to end the happiness that he saw around him.”
