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HIGHLAND PARK, Illinois – Randy Winters was unable to convince his wife to come to the parade on July 4 this year; she was too upset by the Supreme Court’s abortion decision to “celebrate America,” she told him. But he went anyway and took a spot near the commuter train tracks that cut through the city.
As he watched the Highland Park High School band, playing a patriotic tune, Winters, 56, told a friend, “That’s what it’s about. America isn’t so bad after all.”
“And then I heard boom-boom-boom-boom-boom,” Winters said. “People just shouted ‘Shooter!’ ”
Nearby, 39-year-old Ashlee Jaffe was sitting on a park bench with her son. They had just had breakfast at Walker Bros. Original Pancake House when the shooting started.
Before he could reconstruct what was happening, a bullet struck Jaffe’s left hand. He grabbed his 5-year-old son from under the bench and wrapped his body around him as he screamed..
Several people were killed and injured in a shooting at a July 4 parade in Highland Park, Illinois, on July 4. (Video: The Washington Post)
Around him, hundreds of paradisiacs made the same frantic calculations, desperately seeking refuge as it rained bullets from the sky. Some ran to open cafes and restaurants. Others hid behind pottery pots or ran down the street. Two days after the shooting, many residents of this town were reproducing the scene in their minds, trying to make sense of the tragedy.
“It simply came to our notice then [the shooter] it was located, “said Joel Kagan, who was at the parade with his family.” We didn’t know he wasn’t on the ground. We didn’t know he was on the roof. We didn’t know where he was. We only heard the shots, they were coming and coming and coming “.
Kagan fled to Smart Jewelers, the store he owns, where he took refuge with 16 people, including 11 he did not know. They spent the next few hours there before the police heard them up to their vehicles.
From two floors, the gunman reloaded his Smith & Wesson M & P15 semi-automatic rifle, over and over again, officials later said, firing 90 bullets in about a minute.
The suspect, Robert E. Crimo III, had been planning the massacre for weeks, police said. On the day of the shooting, he climbed a fire escape on the roof of a business and aimed a rifle in the heart of the shopping district of this Chicago suburb, near the start of the parade route, according to the authorities.
Minutes after the kids pedaled With bicycles adorned with American flags and flags, with his dogs towed, the gunman opened fire.
In the midst of the Highland Park carnage, seven dead and a small child were left alone
Marissa Haas attends the parade every year, even returning from a vacation home in Wisconsin to make sure she sees the band, disguised dogs, and fire trucks. On Monday, she and her daughter had just seen the band pass by when they heard pops. At first, Haas thought they were shots fired by Civil War recreators, a staple of the parade.
But the shots got faster.
“That’s when my sister yelled,‘ My God, it’s real. Get up and go! ‘ said Haas, 48.
“I looked up and masses of people were flying towards us,” he said. “My sister grabbed her 3-year-old son and her husband grabbed his 6-year-old. My daughter got up and ran.”
Haas’ 9-year-old nephew froze on the street, not moving. “I said,‘ Jack, I need you to run with me, ’” Haas said. “I was probably hurting him, but I just grabbed him by the waist and, like, I was wearing him.”
Haas’ 6-year-old niece and brother-in-law lost their shoes on the street to run so fast.
Cassie Goldstein told NBC News Tuesday that she was at the parade with her mother, Katherine Goldstein, when they heard what they thought were firecrackers. “Then I looked up and saw the shooter shooting at the kids,” the 22-year-old told presenter Lester Holt. “And I told him he was a shooter and he had to run.”
Shortly after she started running, Katherine Goldstein was shot in the chest and hit the sidewalk, her daughter said. “I knew she was dead,” Cassie Goldstein told NBC. “I told him I loved him, but I couldn’t stop, because he was still shooting everyone by my side.”
When Emily Lieberman, a pediatrician, heard the bullets, she grabbed her 5-year-old son in her arms; her husband took her 8-year-old son. After quickly separating from her husband, Lieberman and her 5-year-old son found their way to an open cellar, entered a one-person bathroom, locked the door, and turned it off. the light.
After a few minutes, others fleeing the scene began knocking on the door, begging Lieberman to open it. He did, and 16 people crowded inside, texting frantically to loved ones. Two hours later, her husband and brother-in-law passed a barricade in a car to pick her up.
“The fact that my kids will have that memory for the rest of their lives is the most devastating,” Lieberman said.
Karen Abrams found a hiding place in Country Kitchen, four blocks from the shooting. When he left an hour and a half later he saw a man walking away from the scene covered in blood. “I asked him if he was okay and he said, ‘It’s not my blood, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay.'”
She headed to the crossroads to see if she could find family and friends, but was stopped by a man. “You don’t want to see that,” he told her.
According to police, Crimo abandoned his rifle and escaped by mingling with the terrified crowd that rushed from the scene. She wore women’s clothing and makeup to cover her facial tattoos, according to Christopher Covelli, a spokesman for the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force.
Shortly after the shooting ended, Lauren Silva, Tom Brooks and Morgan Brooks came out of the underground parking lot where they had been hiding.
They came out at a horrifying sight: bodies on the ground, chairs, teddy bears, and Barbie dolls abandoned in the stampede. Excited, they were about to return to the garage when Morgan Brooks looked at a victim and saw a small child trapped beneath him, he said. He and his father removed the child, Aiden McCarthy, from under the man they later identified as Kevin McCarthy.
Authorities later confirmed that Kevin McCarthy and Aiden’s mother, Irina McCarthy, were killed in the shooting.
Tom Brooks gave Aiden to Silva, he said. Meanwhile, Morgan Brooks ripped off his Grateful Dead T-shirt to try to make a tourniquet for Kevin McCarthy, who was bleeding profusely from the inside of his thigh, he said. Back underground, Silva tried to comfort Aiden by telling him about his own children.
Shortly afterwards, Silva handed the boy over to Greg and Dana Ring, who had run to their car in the parking lot after narrowly escaping the shooting. Police eventually reunited Aidan with his grandparents.
A few miles away, Jaffe, a pediatric physiatrist from Philadelphia, sat in the waiting area of the emergency room at NorthShore Highland Park Hospital with her hand wrapped in gauze. He heard staff repeat the words “Code Blue” as emergency vehicles left casualties. About 30 people were injured in the shooting, along with the seven dead.
Less critically ill patients began to sit around him: a war veteran who said he had never been shot in combat but suffered a bullet in the leg in the parade; a couple who had their legs salted with broken glass fragments while the shop windows were broken next to them.
Jaffe took a trip to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, where he received stitches.
“I guess if you have to make a bullet wound at a mass casualty event, I’m very lucky to have one,” Jaffe said.
In other parts of the city, families were urged to stay inside while police searched for the gunman. Drivers seeking to rescue their loved ones from hiding places near the parade route were turned down by officers. Those who ventured out of hiding in the hours after the shooting ran down the sidewalks and parking lots to their home or their cars, not knowing if the terror was over, they said.
Christopher Covelli, spokesman for the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force, said the suspect in Highland Park, Illinois, was planning to go to Madison, Wisconsin (Video: AP)
While Highland Park residents took refuge at his place, Crimo borrowed his mother’s car and began driving, police said.
Officials say the suspect traveled to Madison, Wisconsin, where he “seriously contemplated” using a KelTec rifle and about 60 cartridges in his car to commit another shooting, according to Covelli.
Covelli said it was unclear why Crimo did not move forward, but said there were indications he did not think he had done enough planning. The suspect continued to drive and eventually abandoned his phone in neighboring Middleton, Wisconsin, Covelli said.
Finally, authorities say, Crimo returned to the northern part of Chicago, where Ryan Lerman, 19, was handing out pizzas. He was nervous as his turn began, as the shooter was still loose, he said. Some of Lerman’s co-workers had even called, too scared to come to work.
While driving through the northwest suburbs, Lerman was alerted to a silver Honda Fit, car authorities said the gunman was driving. Then, as he was sitting inside his Hyundai at an intersection in the Lake Forest, he saw one. He was, he said, “just horrified.” What if the shooting started again?
Police arrested a “person of interest” hours after a shooting at the July 4 parade in Highland Park, Illinois (Video: The Washington Post)
Before he could call what he saw, a swarm of patrol cars stopped, lights flashing. Lerman backed up, then pulled out the phone and began recording while officers jumped out of their cars. They backed away, guns pointed and gave Crimo orders through a loudspeaker, according to the footage.
“He just, like, instantly …