The suspected perpetrator of the killings during National Day celebrations in Highland Park had planned his attack “for weeks” and disguised himself as a woman to avoid identification, police in the nearby small town said on Tuesday. from Chicago.
Robert Crimo, 21, used a “powerful rifle similar to an AR-15” to likely randomly shoot participants in the July 4 parade from the top of a business, said Christopher Covelli, a police official, at a press conference. “We believe he has been planning this attack for weeks,” he said.
He is silent “dressed as a woman” to hide his identity and may have worn a long hair wig to hide his facial tattoos, he said, adding that he then dropped his gun and mingled with the crowd fleeing the parade. The young man fired more than 70 times into the crowd, killing six adults and injuring at least 30 people.
The horrible sight of some bodies is unbearable for a normal person
As of Tuesday morning, Main Street in this affluent Chicago suburb was still blocked by police and frozen in the opening moments of the shooting. A stroller, a tricycle, folding chairs: the quantity of objects left pell-mell abandoned around the scene of the tragedy testified to the chaos generated by the gunshots on Monday.
Dr David Baum, a doctor who was involved in the rescue operations at the scene, testified to the horror of the attack. “The horrible sight of certain bodies is unbearable for a normal person”he said on CNN, referring to victims “exploded” or “gutted” by the bullets.
“It’s my destiny”
Originally from the small town near Highwood, the shooter was identified thanks to surveillance videos and tracing of the weapon he had legally purchased, Covelli said. He was arrested on Monday by the police who had released the photo of a diaphanous young man, with an emaciated and tattooed face.
He did not explain his act but a video posted eight months ago shows a young man in a bedroom and a classroom with posters of a gunman and people being shot at.
It contains an audio commentary: “I just need to do it”, then “It’s my destiny. Everything has led me to this. Nothing can stop me, not even myself”.
Images archived on the suspect’s Twitter account show him in particular with a flag of support for former Republican President Donald Trump on his back.
“How did someone get so angry to go after innocent people?”
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering told NBC that she knew the young man when he was a boy in the Boy Scouts. “This is where you have to reflect and wonder what happened: how did someone become so angry, so full of hatred to go after innocent people spending a day with their families ?”, did she say.
The aedile mentioned “incredible sadness and shock” that hit the city. “It should never have happened in our small town where everyone knows someone who has been directly affected” by tragedy.
Paul Crimo, the suspect’s uncle, told CNN on Tuesday that he had not seen “no sign that would explain what he did”.
National Day celebrations have been canceled in several surrounding towns, without preventing violence. In Philadelphia, two police officers were injured after being targeted during the July 4 fireworks.
The country still reeling from a series of shootings
The country is still reeling from a series of shootings, one of which, perpetrated by an 18-year-old young man in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killed 21 people, including 19 children on May 24.
President Joe Biden ordered flags on public buildings to be lowered to half-mast on Tuesday. He recently obtained a relative political success by getting Congress to pass a law aimed at better regulating the sale of arms, of which nearly 400 million are in circulation in the United States.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, which includes suicides in its data, more than 22,400 people have been killed by firearms since the start of the year.