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HIGHLAND PARK, United States (AFP) — The suspected gunman who opened hearth on a July 4 parade in a rich Chicago suburb deliberate the assault for weeks and wore girls’s clothes to help his escape, police mentioned Tuesday.
Robert Crimo, 21, whose household lives in Highwood, simply north of Highland Park, the place the taking pictures occurred, was arrested Monday after six individuals have been killed — together with at the least one member of the Jewish group — and greater than 30 wounded throughout an Independence Day parade.
Deputy police chief Christopher Covelli mentioned no motive had been established for the assault, through which the gunman sprayed the group with dozens of semi-automatic rounds fired from a rooftop.
“We do imagine Crimo pre-planned this assault for a number of weeks,” Covelli mentioned. “He introduced a high-powered rifle to this parade, he accessed the roof of a enterprise through a hearth escape ladder and commenced opening hearth.”
“Crimo was wearing girls’s clothes and investigators imagine he did this to hide his facial tattoos and his id and assist him in the course of the escape with the opposite individuals who have been fleeing the chaos,” the deputy police chief added.
Covelli mentioned the gunman fired greater than 70 rounds from a rifle “much like an AR-15” that he had bought legally.
Authorities are investigating disturbing on-line posts and movies made by Crimo, who was captured about eight hours after the taking pictures following a quick automotive chase.
The taking pictures has left the upscale suburb in shock.
“We’re all nonetheless reeling,” Mayor Nancy Rotering instructed NBC’s Right now present. “Unbelievable shock,” Rotering mentioned. “All people is aware of someone who was affected by this immediately.”
The mayor mentioned she personally knew the suspected gunman when he was a younger boy within the Cub Scouts and she or he was a Cub Scout chief.
“How did someone turn out to be this offended, this hateful, to then take it out on harmless individuals who actually have been simply having a household time out?” Rotering requested.
David Baum, a health care provider whose two-year-old was within the parade, witnessed the taking pictures and helped deal with a number of the injured.
“The individuals who have been gone have been blown up by that gunfire,” Baum instructed CNN, calling it a “horrific scene.”
On Tuesday, police and FBI brokers have been sifting via belongings left behind by members of the group as they fled. Strollers, bicycles, folding chairs and different gadgets littered the parade route via the primary road of Highland Park.
Crimo, whose father unsuccessfully ran for mayor and owns a retailer in Highland Park referred to as Bob’s Pantry and Deli, was an novice musician billing himself as “Awake the Rapper.” The youthful Crimo’s on-line postings embody violent content material that alluded to weapons and shootings.
One YouTube video posted eight months in the past featured cartoons of a gunman and other people being shot. A voice-over says “I would like to only do it.” It provides: “It’s my future. Every thing has led as much as this. Nothing can cease me, not even myself.”
Crimo, who has the phrase “Awake” tattooed over an eyebrow, is seen sporting an “FBI” baseball cap in quite a few images and is carrying a Trump flag as a cape in a single image.
The taking pictures is the newest in a wave of gun violence plaguing the USA, the place roughly 40,000 deaths a 12 months are brought on by firearms, based on the Gun Violence Archive.
The deeply divisive debate over gun management was reignited by two massacres in Could that noticed 10 Black individuals gunned down at an upstate New York grocery store and 19 youngsters and two academics slain at an elementary faculty in Texas.
The Highland Park taking pictures solid a pall over Independence Day, when cities and cities throughout the US maintain parades and other people attend barbecues, sporting occasions and fireworks shows. In one other July 4 taking pictures, two law enforcement officials have been wounded after they got here below hearth throughout a fireworks present in Philadelphia.
In Highland Park, Emily Prazak, who marched within the parade, described the mayhem.
“We heard the pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, and I believed it was fireworks,” Prazak mentioned.
5 of the six individuals killed, all adults, died on the scene. The sixth was taken to hospital however succumbed to wounds there. Highland Park Hospital, the place many of the victims have been taken, mentioned it had obtained greater than two dozen individuals with gunshot wounds aged eight to 85.
US President Joe Biden voiced shock and vowed to maintain combating “the epidemic of gun violence.”
“I’m not going to surrender,” he mentioned.
Final week, Biden signed the primary vital federal invoice on gun security in a long time, simply days after the Supreme Court docket dominated that Individuals have a elementary proper to hold a handgun in public.
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