Highland Park Parade Shooter's Sentencing To Extend To Second Day

Nearly three years after the Highland Park parade massacre, survivors packed a Lake County courtroom to witness the sentencing of a 24-year-old who pleaded guilty last month to one of the worst mass shootings in state history.

But the defendant, Robert Crimo III, was nowhere to be seen.

He chose instead to stay in a Lake County jail cell while prosecutors laid out evidence tying him to the attack, some of which has not been shared publicly before. In a video-recorded police interview shown in court, Crimo says he did not want to shoot children though "I know that it happens." In another, he says he briefly considered turning back before opening fire.

Prosecutors shared so much evidence on Wednesday that they ran out of time and asked to continue the hearing on Thursday morning.

The daylong hearing also included testimony from over a dozen victims and their families about how their lives had been irreversibly changed since the attack on July 4, 2022, which left seven dead and 48 people wounded.

"How do you rebuild a life when it's been shattered?" Sheila Gutman, who was struck by a bullet in her foot in the attack, told the court.

Judge Victoria Rossetti, who is expected to hand down a sentence on Thursday, will almost certainly sentence Crimo to life in prison without the chance of parole. Crimo abruptly pleaded guilty last month, on the day his trial was set to begin, to all 69 counts of murder and attempted murder filed against him.

Testimony began on Wednesday with a recently retired Highland Park police commander who witnessed the first moments of the attack and personally transported three victims to the hospital.

Former Cmdr. Gerald Cameron said he then returned to the scene and began freeing people who had locked themselves in a nearby business' basement, fearing the shooter was still nearby.

"They were horrified," Cameron said.

Dana Ruder-Ring testified that she was struck by shrapnel in her foot while running from the scene with her husband and three children. She recalled hearing what sounded like fireworks before realizing it was gunfire.

"It went from watching a parade to pure chaos," she said.

Her family took shelter in an underground parking garage, where she met a woman carrying a toddler. They were both covered in blood. The woman handed her the boy, saying she did not know who his parents were. Ruder-Ring and her husband tried for hours to reunite the boy with his family.

"He kept repeating, 'Mom and Dad are going to come get me soon?" she testified. She later learned that the 2 ½-year-old boy, Aiden McCarthy, was the child of Kevin McCarthy and Irina McCarthy, who were both killed in the attack.

Dr. Jeremy Smiley testified he was at the parade with his family when gunfire erupted. He went straight to Highland Park Hospital to help treat patients, including then-8-year-old Cooper Roberts, who was paralyzed from the waist down by a bullet.

"He's always going to be someone I always remember. That initial feeling, quite frankly, of seeing someone my kid's age — that will never leave me," Smiley said.

Law enforcement officers from the FBI and Lake County Major Crimes Task Force testified about evidence collected at the scene, which included three ammunition magazines from the rooftop, and video collected from Crimo's family's home that showed him entering and leaving minutes after the attack.

The hearing also offered an unprecedented look into the 7 1/2-hour police interrogation of Crimo hours after the shooting, after he was arrested driving his family's car in the north suburbs.

In one interview video shown in court, Crimo says he sat on the steps leading up to the rooftop overlooking the parade and considered changing his mind.

Crimo says in the video he was "just sitting on a stairway for five minutes. And you know ... listening to 'Hells Bells' (from AC/DC). That's a good song," he says. "I was just sitting there waiting, in my head I was thinking, you know, should I stay or should go."

In the video, Crimo says he was "just like a zombie, a sleepwalker." He continues, "You know, it just clicked. ... Motley Crue started playing. ... I just pulled [the weapon] out and" began to assemble it — though he struggled briefly to do that.

"I was thinking, 'Oh no, it's too late. Where do I go from here?' All of a sudden. ... I snap it together. ... I walk up the stairs and jump on the roof, then I open fire," Crimo says in the video.

In the video, Crimo says he was aiming at adults. " I don't want to hit kids. ... I know that it happens but ... They were all running into each other," Crimo says.

Asked by a detective why he killed, Crimo says: "I don't even think I really wanted to, really. It was like I said before. It was as if I got wired like a zombie, sleepwalker. All of a sudden this song starts playing and for some reason I just couldn't think anymore. ... Like, I just did it."

Former Highland Park Police Detective Brian Bodden, who was on the stand to explain the videos, said "sleepwalker" and "zombie" refer to songs Crimo published before the shooting.