Highland Park Parade shooting: Sentencing hearing begins

Highland Park parade shooter Robert Crimo III skipped his sentencing hearing Wednesday, opting to stay in the Lake County Jail instead of listening to the trauma he inflicted upon an entire community.

If he had attended the proceeding, he would have learned about the consequences of his violent actions, about the seven spectators he killed, the four dozen people he injured and the countless others he has scarred in a different way. He would know about the parents who are needed, the spouses who are missed, the people who made this world a happier place.

“You murdered my soulmate, my wife of 33 years, and the mother of my only child,” Bruce Sundheim wrote of his wife, Jacki Sundheim, in a statement read during the hearing. “All the plans, hopes and dreams we had together were destroyed by your violent tantrum.”

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Survivor after survivor spoke, offering 18 impact statements that detailed their acute personal grief and anguish. And in sharing the shooting’s direct effect on their lives, they spoke for a community that was irrevocably changed that July 4, 2022, morning.

“I’ve accepted, more or less, my dad’s death and absence from my life, but I can’t make peace with the way he died,” said Jonathan Straus, whose 88-year-old-father, Stephen Straus, was shot multiple times. “His loss has left a permanent wound in my heart. I think about him every day and every day I experience the same feelings of anger and disbelief — anger at the callousness, cruelty and stupidity of that shooting.”

Also killed in the shooting were Katherine Goldstein, 64; Irina McCarthy, 35, and her husband, Kevin McCarthy, 37; Stephen Straus, 88; Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78; and Eduardo Uvaldo, 69.

Karina Mendez credited her father, Eduardo Uvaldo, with dedicating his life to their family, saying his death “left a tremendous void that can never be filled.”

“My dad was living the American Dream,” she said. “And died the American nightmare.”

Keeley Roberts, the mother of Cooper Roberts, who was paralyzed at age 8 in the shooting, and his twin brother, who was injured by shrapnel, took a different approach. She testified that she would not share with the shooter the anguish he caused, saying, “You have no power over our lives.”

“You and I are both going to be serving life sentences,” she said. “I will serve mine for not being able to protect my children from you.”

She also celebrated her boys for showing resiliency through once-unimaginable circumstances.

“Despite their suffering, they remain the kind and loving boys they have always been,” she said. “The more you hate, the more we will love. … We choose to hold onto hope, even when the situation has felt hopeless.”

Before the impact statements, a half-dozen people testified during the hearing’s first day, including several law enforcement officials who describe the carnage Crimo caused and their efforts to connect him to the mass shooting during the 2022 Independence Day Parade. A Highland Park officer also provided a chilling account of Crimo’s hours-long interrogation following his arrest.

“Sometimes you have to crack a couple of eggs to make an omelet,” Crimo told police.

Crimo unexpectedly pleaded guilty last month to 21 counts of first-degree murder and 48 counts of attempted murder, minutes before opening statements were set to begin in his murder trial. His decision eliminated the need for a weekslong, high-profile court battle that would almost certainly have ended in a guilty verdict. The 24-year-old, who fired an AR-15-style assault rifle from a rooftop into the parade crowd, is expected to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Under state law, anyone found guilty of committing two or more murders receives an automatic life sentence in prison with no possibility of parole.

Crimo told investigators he had been planning the attack since 2017 or 2018, but he implied that COVID postponed his plans, according to a recording of his police interview played in court Wednesday. In the two years leading up to the 2022 shooting, he scouted the downtown on his electric bike and monitored police response times to various calls, he said.

Throughout the interrogation video, Crimo laughed and joked with Highland Park police Detective Brian Bodden and an FBI agent. Bodden had known the shooter and his family since Crimo was a young boy and had talked with him intermittently through the years when residents would call in to complain about Crimo skateboarding or smoking pot..

Crimo said he had listened to AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” in his car that morning while debating whether to carry out his plan.

“In my mind, I was thinking ‘should I stay or should I go,’” Crimo said in a jovial, sing-song voice.

When Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart” started playing, Crimo decided to go through with it, he told Bodden. He planned the shooting in response to “several friends” who were fatally shot by police, but those names — if they exisv— were not mentioned in court.

In the recording, Crimo said he felt like he was a “sleepwalker” as he jogged up toward the roof. He also described himself as a “Zombie”

“It was as if I got wired like a zombie, a sleepwalker, all of a sudden this song starts playing and for some reason I just can’t take it anymore. It was just do it,” he said.

“Zombie” and “Sleepwalker” are also titles of songs Crimo released months earlier, Bodden testified.

When he got to the roof, Crimo aimed for adults in the crowd and tried to hit them from the chest up, he said. He didn’t want to shoot children, he told investigators, but he knew it could happen.

“I didn’t want to maim people,” Crimo told police. “I wanted it to be quick.”

He fired as many as 88 bullets into the crowd, hitting dozens of people and sparking a mass panic.

Amid the chaos and violence, however, heroes emerged.

In addition to avoiding statements about the pain he inflicted, Crimo also missed hearing about the bravery and humanity displayed that day, extraordinary acts that stand in stark contrast to his cowardice and cruelty:

A Highland Park mom who cared for a blood-covered child whose parents could not be found.

A doctor who was watching the parade with his family when the shots were fired and then hurried to the local hospital to help care for the wounded.

A police commander who rushed shooting victims to the hospital in his squad car.

Highland Park resident Dana Ruder Ring told the judge how she took cover in an underground garage with her husband and three children after the shooting began. As Ruder Ring and her husband were trying to collect their thoughts, a woman holding a small boy approached.

Both were covered in blood, Ruder Ring said.

The woman handed the 2-year-old to the couple.

“The blood is not ours,” Ruder Ring recalled the woman saying. “And he’s not mine.”

Imagining how terrified the boy’s parents would be, Ruder Ring’s husband went up to street level to find them. A police officer, however, ordered him to take cover because it was still an active shooting scene.

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The couple then drove to her parents’ house, stopping first at the Fire Department to give the little boy to someone who could find his parents. The first responders there, however, asked them to keep the child until things calmed down.

Ruder Ring, who had been hit by shrapnel in the foot during the shooting, and her husband took care of the child for the next several hours. She repeatedly tried asking him his name, but he wouldn’t answer.

“His only response was ‘mama and dadda going to come find me soon,’”  Ruder Ring testified, her voice choking with tears.

She later learned the boy’s name was Aiden McCarthy. His parents, Kevin and Irina, were among the seven people fatally shot at the parade.

An FBI agent testified Kevin McCarthy was found holding a toy and child’s shoe.

Dr. Jeremy Smiley, an attending physician with Endeavor Health, met his family to watch the parade that day.

He heard loud, repetitive noises like firecrackers during the procession, but soon realized it was gunshots. He picked up his young daughter, grabbed his dog’s leash, and told his family, “Run, run run!”

They all ran back to the car, and his wife drove him straight to the hospital. He knew from the number of shots — police said there were 88 — that things were going to be “really bad.”

He saw a child, Cooper Roberts, lying listless on a gurney with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. He helped get medical supplies for the boy, but couldn’t bring himself to face the child’s mother.

Cooper, 8, was airlifted to the University of Chicago Medical Center for advanced care, and was paralyzed in the shooting.

Around 20 to 25 patients, many with severe trauma, arrived within a short time, he said. Blood covered the floors, creating a scene unlike anything Smiley has seen in his career.

It heartened him to see medical personnel rushing to the hospital to help on their days off, until there was roughly one doctor for each seriously injured patient. Over the last three years, many of those same selfless workers have experienced mental health challenges because of the mass trauma they witnessed that day.

But the suffering he saw remains an unavoidable memory.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Cooper,” Smiley said.

The hearing opened with Highland Park police Cmdr. Gerald Cameron, who has since retired, detailing the chaotic moments after the shooting began. He described spectators trying to provide medical assistance to the wounded as others around them fled.

When he encountered people hit by bullets and shrapnel, he put them in his own squad car and drove them to the hospital because the paramedics on scene were overwhelmed. He made three separate trips that day.

Cameron then returned downtown to help spectators who had taken cover inside local businesses. In one bike shop, 15 people — including children — had locked themselves in the basement to shield themselves from the gunman, he said.

“They were reluctant to come out. They were reluctant to come to the door,” Cameron testified. “They were horrified.”

After the hearing, attorney Antonio Romanucci, who represents many of the victims in a civil suit against gun maker Smith & Wesson, said Crimo III was a coward for not showing up for the hearing, and showed no remorse in his interview with police.

He said his clients have only one hope — that Crimo III gets sentenced to “rot” in his cell the rest of his life.

Prosecutors plan to present one more victim impact statement Thursday. Crimo’s defense team also will have the opportunity to present mitigating evidence in his favor, if it chooses.