Here we are talking about Highland Park Shooter. The father of the suspect in the Fourth of July parade shootings that left seven people dead and numerous others injured in Highland Park, Illinois, was arrested on Friday and is now being charged with felony reckless conduct, according to the announcement from the prosecutor’s office.
According to Eric Rinehart, the state’s attorney for Lake County, Robert Crimo Jr. is accused of seven charges of felony reckless conduct. According to Rinehart, Crimo Jr. handed himself in to law authorities and will have a bond hearing on Saturday.
Nearly three years before the massacre, Crimo Jr. allegedly signed his son’s application for an Illinois Firearm Owners Identification card, which is necessary to buy a pistol in that state. Prosecutors claim this action was “criminally careless.”
Prosecutors stated in a news release that helping his son obtain the card was a “contributing cause to the bodily harm suffered by the homicide victims in the mass shooting.”
Seven people were killed, and dozens more were hurt by the alleged shooter, Robert “Bobby” E. Crimo III, last summer during what was meant to be a joyful, family-friendly patriotic festival. The injured ranged in age from 8 to 85.
According to Rinehart, the alleged gunman was under 21 years old and could not have obtained the card without a parent’s help. Years after local police got a tip that the son had threatened to “murder everyone” in his family, according to police back in July, the elder Crimo, who has previously denied involvement in the mass shooting, agreed to sponsor his son’s gun license in 2019.
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The younger Crimo was reportedly inspected by police earlier that year after he allegedly “attempted to commit suicide by machete.” The parent’s legal representative claimed in July that the disputed information in the police reports about the incidents. “Parents and guardians should decide whether their teen should possess a weapon.
The first line of defense in them. When Robert Crimo Jr. sponsored his son in this case, the system fell short, Rinehart said on Friday. He signed the form despite knowing what he knew. George Gomez, the attorney for Crimo Jr., referred to the accusations as “baseless and unprecedented.”
Gomez said in a statement that the decision “should alarm every single parent in the United States of America who, according to the Lake County State’s Attorney, knows exactly what is going on with their 19-year-old adult children and can be held criminally responsible for actions taken nearly three years later.” These accusations are baseless, and we will fight them at every turn.
While the charges against Crimo Jr. are “politically motivated and a diversion from the actual change that needs to happen in this nation,” the attorney continued, Crimo Jr. sympathizes with the victims of the terrible massacre.
Charges Against Parents in Another Case
Although generally, parents of alleged shooters have not been charged in mass shootings, this is at least the second case in recent memory in which parents have been accused of crimes involving their child’s acts of violence.
James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of the Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley, are anticipated to go on trial after entering a not-guilty plea to four counts of involuntary manslaughter related to the shooting. They have maintained that they shouldn’t be held accountable for their son’s murders because the accusations lack any basis in law. In October, Ethan Crumbley entered a plea to terrorism and murder charges related to the mass shooting at Oxford High School in November 2021 that left four students dead and numerous others injured.
In recent court documents, the prosecution in the case revealed evidence that they claim demonstrates Crumbley’s mother was aware of his unsound mental state when the parents purchased a rifle for him days before the shooting.
According to Eric A. Johnson, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, a reckless homicide charge can be brought against anyone who commits an act that results in the death of another person as long as they were careless in doing so, which means they were aware of a significant and unreasonable risk that the act would result in the death of another person.
Illinois Investigators Gathered Evidence for Months
Prosecutors in Lake County, Illinois, said they were examining the evidence “in terms of who knew what when” and had not ruled out charges against the father in the days following the July 4 attack there.
Rinehart, the county state’s attorney, reaffirmed that there was no criminal liability for sponsoring a firearm owner’s ID but that there were “different ways to look at potential criminal liability” in this case after the mass shooting investigators tried to piece together what relatives and others may have known before the attack.
Since the attack’s first night, “enormous volumes of digital data” have been examined by local and federal investigators, according to the state’s attorney. According to Rinehart, numerous members of the federal, state, and local law enforcement communities have been analyzing the digital evidence in this case. “Our Cyber Lab staff were essential members of the team that assisted us in learning the facts about the crucial weeks before the FOID‘s issuance.”
According to court officials, Crimo III entered a not-guilty plea in August to 117 criminal charges, including 21 counts of first-degree murder. In addition, he was charged with 48 charges of aggravated violence and 48 counts of attempted first-degree murder, one account for each victim hit by a gunshot, bullet fragment, or shrapnel, according to Rinehart at the time.
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