The Highland Park parade shooting suspect on Wednesday abruptly decided to not go through with a change of his not guilty plea.
Robert Crimo III fell silent when the judge asked if the agreement outlined by Lake County prosecutors was what he’d discussed with his lawyers. Court was briefly recessed, and when Crimo returned his lawyers said their client no longer wanted to go ahead with a change of plea.
Prosecutors said Crimo had agreed to plead guilty to seven counts of first-degree murder in connection with the mass shooting nearly two years ago. In all, he was to plead guilty to a total of 55 counts, prosecutors said.
He was to be sentenced to natural life, without the possibility of supervised release, for the murder charges. This would be served consecutively with a 30-year term for other charges.
Crimo was in a wheelchair at the hearing. Crimo requested a wheelchair because he was nervous and worried he would be unable to walk, Lake County Sheriff’s Deputy Chief Chris Covelli said. His hands and legs were shackled.
Walking out of the courthouse Wednesday, Crimo’s mother, Denise Pesina, called the hearing “a win.”
“I’m the proud mother of a faithful God-loving son, Robert Crimo III, also known as Bobby Crimo, who is innocent, and I have evidence that he is innocent,” Pesina said.
Pesina declined to say when she last spoke with her son.
Activist Ashbey Beasley, who attended the Fourth of July parade with her son, said she could feel the disappointment in the courtroom when Crimo decided not to change his plea.
“It’s heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t be happening,” Beasley told reporters outside the courthouse. “It should have never happened in the first place but to continually traumatize survivors and victims’ families again and again is unspeakable.”
“It doesn’t feel real, it feels like a game,” Beasley said.
The court hearing was highly anticipated, with victims and their families filling a section of the gallery that held about 70 people. They had come in anticipating of reading statements before the court on how the massacre affected their lives.
The court clerk’s office expected the hearing to last most of the day and had scheduled the hearing in a larger court room to accommodate victims and their families.
Crimo was charged with 117 felony counts after the shooting that killed seven people and wounded 48 others. He’s been held at the Lake County jail pending trial.
The next hearing in the case is Aug. 28. His trial is scheduled for February 2025.
Horror on the Fourth
The Lake County state’s attorney’s office accused Crimo of carrying out one of the deadliest mass shootings in Illinois history.
Prosecutors have said Crimo planned the attack for weeks before he opened fire from a rooftop overlooking the Highland Park Fourth of July Parade. Authorities said he disguised himself when he allegedly fired more than 70 rounds from an assault rifle overlooking Central Avenue and Second Street at 10:14 a.m. that morning.
Crimo initially fled in his mother’s car. He allegedly headed toward Madison, Wisconsin, where authorities said he may have been considering a second attack. He was arrested near North Chicago later that day.
Crimo’s motive in the attack is still unclear. He allegedly told investigators that he committed the attack to “wake people up,” according to a federal search warrant.
He was indicted on 117 felony counts in his August 2022 arraignment. Twenty-one of the counts were for the murders of seven victims — three counts for each of them. Prosecutors also charged Crimo with 48 counts of attempted murder, one for each of the wounded victims, and 48 counts of aggravated battery.
Killed in the massacre were Irina and Kevin McCarthy, Jacki Sundheim, Katherine Goldstein, Eduardo Uvaldo, Nicolas Toledo and Stephen Straus.
Massacre led to changes in state laws, set a precedent for prosecution of parents
The massacre led to a statewide assault weapons ban that survived challenges at the Illinois and U.S. Supreme Courts.
Advocates invoked the shooting in renewed calls for a national assault weapons ban. Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, who helped implement an assault weapon ban in the north suburb in 2013, traveled to Washington, D.C., after the attack with other officials to push for a national ban.
The shooting also highlighted the shortcomings of the state’s red flag laws meant to prohibit the sale of firearms to certain people. Crimo was able to buy the assault weapons used in the attack despite two police reports that indicated he made suicidal statements and threatened to harm his family. That didn’t trigger the state’s red flag law because the family denied the threats and there was no domestic violence order or court order restraining him from having a gun.
After the shooting, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly implemented an emergency rule that allowed the state police to consider a wider range of information to flag someone as a “clear and present danger.”
The shooting also led to a groundbreaking prosecution of Crimo’s father for helping his son obtain the weapons used in the attack. His father, Robert Crimo Jr., signed his son’s gun ownership application in 2019 because his son was too young to get one himself. Lake County prosecutors later charged Crimo Jr. with reckless conduct because they alleged he was aware of his son’s past suicidal and homicidal statements.
Crimo Jr. was about to stand trial late last year when he accepted a last-minute deal, pleading guilty to misdemeanor counts and accepting a two-month sentence.