A nursing home chef who dreams of owning his own food truck. A summer camp counselor who faced the task of announcing the Highland Park massacre to a group of kids. A retired toolmaker who cared for his wife until she died.
And a woman whose great-grandfather killed two police officers a century ago.
These are among the 12 jurors chosen for the panel that will decide whether Robert Crimo III pulled the trigger in one of the worse massacres in Illinois history. He is accused of killing seven and wounding 48 while shooting from a rooftop at Highland Park’s July 4 parade in 2022.
The jurors — six men and six women — are set to return Monday for opening statements in a trial that could last three to five weeks. Six alternate jurors were also accepted as jury selection wrapped up on its third day Wednesday.
Since the process began Monday, Lake County Judge Victoria Rossetti has questioned most of the 80-some people called in to be potential jurors for the case.
Many jurors were dismissed after saying they could not commit the three to five weeks the trial is estimated to take. Prosecutors have said they expect most of the 48 wounded victims to testify.
The judge asked each juror separately if they could fairly judge the evidence and set aside any feelings they had formed. Most people said they could be fair and set aside the biases.
Some said they could not.
“I’d like to say I would be able to be fair, but I have a neighbor [who attended the parade] … His daughter still has nightmares about it. I can’t say for certain I can forget those firsthand accounts I heard,” one potential juror said before the judge dismissed him.
One juror selected on Wednesday said she at first thought Crimo was guilty after seeing news accounts shortly after the attack.
“Did I form an opinion on his guilt or innocence?” the 51-year-old cardiologist tech told the judge. “Of course I formed an opinion. We all assumed he was guilty.”
The juror then clarified that she could set aside that opinion and judge only the evidence shown at trial.
That came a day after another juror pledged to be impartial even though she, too, initially thought Crimo guilty.
Crimo skipped court for most of jury selection despite the warning from Rossetti that the trial would carry on without him. He did not appear in court at all Wednesday, after he declined to return in the afternoon sessions on Monday and Tuesday.
A sheriff’s deputy told the judge on Wednesday that Crimo declined two invitations to be brought back to the courtroom.
Prosecutors have said they have a video-recorded confession, surveillance video and more evidence ties Crimo to the crime.
Crimo’s attorneys have not indicated a defense strategy. Last month they failed to prohibit hours of his police interview from trial by claiming Crimo was not properly notified of a family lawyer who came to speak with him.
There has been no indication if Crimo will return to court for the trial — or if he plans to testify himself.
Crimo faces 70 counts of murder and attempted murder, after prosecutors on Monday dropped 48 counts of aggravated battery without explanation. Crimo faces life in prison if he is convicted on two of the murder counts.
All six alternate jurors were chosen on Wednesday. One is a secretary and nearing retirement. Another is recent transplant from Pennsylvania who did not know of the case until he heard it on radio when driving to jury selection.
One alternate juror has a daughter who witnessed people running from the attack from her workplace in downtown Highland Park. Another is a California-born financial adviser.
Jurors chosen Monday included a man who worked his way up from being a dishwasher but hoped to own a food truck some day and a summer camp counselor who broke the news of the tragedy to children in her charge on July 4, 2022 — after first checking to make sure the relatives of some of the Highland Park children were OK.
And the first juror to be accepted on Monday was a business analyst who was asked if anyone in her family has a criminal past. She told the judge her great-grandfather left his family in Ohio in 1917 and killed two police officers.