Residents of Highland Park have felt deep pain and grief over the six months since a gunman opened fire, killing seven people and wounding dozens at the city’s annual Fourth of July parade.
As the year winds to a close, the city continues to come to grips with what occurred, how to grieve those lost and what, if anything, should be done to prevent future gun violence, in what is tragically one of the Lake County News-Sun’s top stories of 2022.
Local leaders from Highland Park, including Mayor Nancy Rotering, U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider and County Board members who were at the parade, have advocated for changes to gun laws.
A longtime proponent of banning assault weapons, Schneider said he will “never forget the shock of that day, nor the grief of our community,” as he looks back on the summer violence.
“Without question, the watershed moment of the past year was the Highland Park Independence Day Parade shooting,” Schneider, D-Highland Park, wrote in an email to the News-Sun. “Seven wonderful people were murdered: Katherine Goldstein, Irina and Kevin McCarthy, Stephen Straus, Jackie Sundheim, Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, and Eduardo Uvaldo.
“More than 40 people were wounded, and our entire community was traumatized,” he continued. “It was the 308th mass shooting in the US in a year that has seen more than 600 mass shootings.”
State Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, who was also at the parade, has advocated for the Illinois General Assembly to enact an assault weapons ban, filing a bill earlier this month that would ban high-capacity magazines and outlaw firearm owner’s identification cards for most people under 21.
More striking, though, were the actions from everyday people from Highland Park who stepped up in the subsequent weeks and months as the presence of national and local media dissipated. People of all ages, including high school students, did what they could to help people grieve and to make sure their concerns about safety would not go unheard by politicians in Washington D.C. and Springfield.
Hundreds of unnamed and uncredited people volunteered their time, skills and empathy to those in desperate need of support around Highland Park, Highwood and the surrounding communities. Area schools, public libraries and places of worship turned into hosts for pop-up centers for mental health professionals, and offered a variety of other services and resources.
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Survivors Emily Lieberman and Ivy Domont helped organize hundreds of people to march on the U.S. Capitol to pressure lawmakers to pass a federal assault weapons ban, including Highland Park residents and shooting survivors who banded together with parents of children murdered in the May 24 Uvalde, Texas mass shooting.
March Fourth, a nonprofit advocacy group launched following the tragedy, has continued to lobby the U.S. Senate to vote on an assault weapons ban, which organizers say nearly half of the legislative chamber supports.
Lieberman, a pediatrician, told the baiduhai last month that she wants to teach her children, who fled the parade with her, “to be leaders and to make the world better,” which is part of why she spoke about banning assault weapons outside the Capitol alongside more than 50 physicians and health experts.
Others back in Highland Park have engineered unique, safe settings for people to deal with grief and find community, like two local fathers who started a support group and turned down an interview request, citing the important need for privacy.
Highland Park City Manager Ghida Neukirch expressed her gratitude to city staff and organizations like the North Suburban Legal Aid Clinic, Family Service of Lake County, Moraine Township, and Highwood and Highland Park’s public libraries for the comprehensive help they have offered.
She said the city has been in regular communication with the victims’ families as the alleged shooter moves through the criminal justice system.
The alleged shooter, Robert Crimo III, has been charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, with his next court hearing set for Jan. 31.
Lake County prosecutors also charged his father with felony reckless conduct this month for sponsoring his son’s FOID card application.
The Highland Park City Council is set to discuss plans for a permanent memorial at its Jan. 23 Committee of the Whole meeting.
Neukirch said the city recognizes that, “there are people that are forever going to be traumatized.”
In an end-of-year statement, Rotering thanked residents for responding to tragedy with “kindness, mindfulness, determination and support for each other,” and said the shooting “did not define us.”
“If we have learned anything about ourselves,” she wrote, “it is that we can adapt, we care for each other, and we stand together to support our shared values.”