Police offered some additional details regarding what happened on July 4.
The man who opened fire on an Independence Day parade near Chicago used an AR-15-style rifle to fire more than 70 bullets, killing at least seven people, and was initially able to evade police by dressing as a woman. and posing as one of the fleeing revelers, authorities said Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force told a news conference that the suspected shooter, who was arrested Monday night, used a high-powered rifle “similar to an AR-15” to fire bullets from atop a commercial building once morest a crowd gathered to watch the parade in Highland Park, a community of regarding 30,000 people on the shores of Lake Michigan that has long attracted the wealthy and sometimes the famous.
Authorities also reported the death of a seventh person. More than 30 were injured in the attack, which Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli said had been planned for several weeks.
Investigators who questioned the suspect and reviewed his social media posts have not determined a reason for the attack or found any indication that it was motivated by racial, religious or other hatred, Covelli added.
Authorities have not filed criminal charges.
FBI agents were rummaging through dumpsters and under picnic sheets Tuesday to find more evidence at the attack site. At first, people mistook the shots for fireworks before hundreds of attendees fled in terror.
A day later, within the wide perimeter established by the police, ordinary artifacts such as baby strollers and lawn chairs remained, abandoned by terrified neighbors. Some people were approaching the perimeter to collect some of their belongings.
One of the attendees, David Shapiro, 47, said the volley of gunfire quickly turned the parade into “chaos.”
“People didn’t immediately know where the shots were coming from, if the gunman was in front of you or behind you, chasing you,” he said Tuesday as he retrieved a baby stroller and lawn chairs.
Monday’s shooting joined a series of incidents that have upended the rituals of American life.
In recent months, schools, churches, grocery stores and now community parades have become the scene of massacres. This time, the bloodshed came as the nation tried to find reasons to celebrate its founding and the ties that still hold it together.
“It definitely hurts the most not only when it’s in your town, but when it’s happening right in front of you,” said Ron Tuazon, a resident who returned to the parade route to retrieve his chairs, sheets and a child’s bike that the family left abandoned when the shooting began.
“It has become a common thing,” Tuazon added. “We no longer blink. It will be more of the same until the laws change.”
A police officer took Robert E. Crimo III into custody north of the shooting scene several hours following police released his photo and warned that he was possibly armed and dangerous,” Highland Park Police Chief Lou Jogmen said.
Authorities initially said Crimo, whose father once ran for mayor of Highland Park, was 22 years old. But an FBI bulletin and Crimo’s social media show that he is 21.
The shooting occurred at a point on the parade route where many of the residents had set aside places with a good view of the parade hours before.
One of them was Nicolás Toledo, a Mexican who was visiting his family in Illinois. He was shot and died at the scene, his granddaughter Xochil Toledo told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Police have not released details regarding the victims, but Toledo’s granddaughter told the Sun-Times that her grandfather spent most of his life in Morelos, Mexico. Xochil Toledo said that she remembers that she was seeing her grandfather, who is over 70 years old, while a gang passed in front of them.
“I was very happy,” he recounted. “Happy to just enjoy the moment.”
Xochil Toledo said her father tried to protect her grandfather and was shot in the arm. Xochil Toledo’s boyfriend was also shot in the back and taken to hospital.
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