The father of alleged Highland Park shooter Robert Crimo III knew his son represented a substantial risk to others and he should not have aided his son’s efforts to buy guns, Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said Monday as prosecutors announced a guilty plea in the father’s case.
In an eleventh-hour negotiated plea, Robert Crimo Jr. pleaded guilty Monday morning to seven counts of misdemeanor reckless conduct. Crimo was ordered to spend 60 days in Lake County Jail, perform 100 hours of community service and serve two years on probation, in exchange for his guilty plea.
He had been scheduled to stand trial this week on felony reckless conduct charges stemming from an affidavit he signed in December 2019 that helped his then-underaged son obtain his state firearm owners ID card.
Just a month later, in January 2020, prosecutors said Crimo III bought an assault rifle from a Kentucky gun shop in an online purchase, Rinehart said. On July 4, 2022, authorities say he used that same weapon to open fire on the crowd gathered for the Independence Day parade in Highland Park.
More Top Picks Best Hot Chocolate Makers
Seven people died, and dozens more were wounded.
Prosecutors charged the father in December of 2022, saying his decision to help Crimo III obtain his FOID card was reckless, given what he knew of his son’s issues.
“The defendant, because he knew more, was aware of the substantial risk to others,” Rinehart told Judge George Strickland.
What Crimo Jr. knew of his son’s alleged issues was expected to take center stage at the trial. In pretrial hearings, prosecutors said they planned to call witnesses, including Crimo’s brother, who would testify that Crimo III had expressed suicidal ideations.
A church group youth leader was expected to testify that Crimo III, at around age 14, had discussed carrying out a school shooting.
Prosecutors also were expected to present transcripts of Crimo III’s interview with police in the hours after the shooting.
Crimo Jr. did not make any statements in court, other than to answer standard questions from the judge. His attorney, George Gomez, addressed reporters after the hearing, saying his client accepted a plea deal because prosecutors were pitting members of the family against one another.
Gomez said Crimo Jr. felt it was in the best interest of his family and the Highland Park community not to publicly relive the tragedies of the Fourth of July shooting in a trial.
“The last thing Mr. Crimo wants is the Highland Park community to relive these tragic events and make a public spectacle,” the attorney said.
As the trial date approached, Gomez said it appeared the state’s strategy required pitting the Crimo family against one another, especially given the father would be prosecuted before the son, disclosing key evidence to the public and jeopardizing his son’s right to a fair trial.
“As a father, Mr. Crimo wanted to ensure that his son received a fair trial,” Gomez said.
The state’s attorney told the judge that negotiations had been ongoing over the weekend, and that victims of the July Fourth shooting had been “extensively consulted.”
The judge ordered Crimo Jr. to turn himself in to begin serving his jail sentence on Nov. 15. His son is due back in court Dec. 11, and a trial date in his case could be set then.
Rinehart said the father’s case and guilty plea has sent a message to prosecutors and police across the country that parents must be held accountable for their actions.
In pleading guilty, Crimo agreed in court that he had knowledge of his son’s dangerous behavior prior to signing the FOID application affidavit.
“Today the legal system has found Robert Crimo Jr. bears responsibility for endangering so many, and he himself has agreed that this was a crime,” Rinehart said. “Parents bear forceful responsibility for their decisions to allow children access to firearms, especially when they are acutely aware of the potential consequences.”
The state’s attorney said many community members he spoke with were looking forward to a trial in the case, but that the plea deal brings closure on the legality of the father’s actions.
“We can begin to write the history of the July 4 tragedy,” he said. “We can begin to set it in concrete.”
Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said the case sends the message that there can be consequences for arming someone who is a known potential danger.
“If you have knowledge that someone is a threat, and you don’t act on that, particularly if you’re a family member who failed to do that, you could be held accountable,” he said. “You can be looking at jail time. That is something we’ve not had before in the state until this moment today.
“There is nothing that can be done by the justice system ever to replace or heal the terrible trauma and wounds of the people that were impacted by the Highland Park shooting, but this is progress,” Kelly continued.
Rinehart said he spoke extensively to families of the victims. He said it’s been difficult for many of them, but the families were supportive of the plea deal.
“So many people I talked to talked about wanting to send the message that parents cannot do this,” he said. “This was enough for many of them.”
One survivor of the mass shooting said the father’s punishment is not enough, and a harsher punishment would be more of a deterrent for other parents who are assisting their child with gun ownership.
“He enabled his son to get a semi-automatic weapons that was then used in a mass shooting,” said Debra Baum, who founded the Highland Park Gun Violence Project after the July 4 shooting. “It’s horrible that he is not being punished more severely. To me, 60 days and to plead guilty to a misdemeanor does not seem like it fit the crime.”
Baum said the Highland Park community is still traumatized from the mass tragedy, and she doesn’t think this verdict brings much peace to area residents.
More Top Picks Best Portable Oxygen Concentrators For Travel
“It’s going to take a lot of years for this community to recover,” she said. “The thing that has helped the community start to recover the most is the action that’s been taken by our lawmakers to ban assault weapons in Illinois. That to me has been the most comfort that I’ve received.”
The reckless conduct case was a new type of prosecution, Rinehart said, since very few parents have been held accountable for the violent actions of their children.
“Mass shootings continue to plague our country and they continue to be committed by individuals like the shooter in this case, who buy their guns legally and who have no prior criminal history,” he said. “Only in America do we grapple with an ocean of firearms, and we are drowning in this ocean.”
State Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, whose district includes Highland Park, said he was in attendance to show gratitude to the state’s attorney office.
“We have the beginning of justice for what we went through as a community,” Morgan said. “This is just a small step, but a step toward justice that we were all hoping, praying for.”
Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois Rifle Association, said the outcome of the case will make people notice there are consequences to arming an irresponsible or dangerous person.
“You shouldn’t be signing off on a FOID card for a person in your family if you know that they’re not responsible,” Pearson said. “If they have irresponsibility in their nature, then you shouldn’t do that, and this young man apparently did.”