HIGHLAND PARK, IL – JULY 04: First responders work the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade on July 4, 2022 in Highland Park, Illinois.
Jim Vondruska | Getty Images News | Getty Images
At least six people were killed and dozens wounded after a gunman opened fire from a rooftop on a Fourth of July parade in the upscale Chicago suburb of Highland Park on Monday morning, sending spectators scrambling for cover, police said.
Robert “Bobby” E. Crimo III, 22 years old, is a person of interest, Lou Jogmen, chief of the Highland Park Police Department, said at a press conference just before 6 p.m. ET, Monday.
Crimo is believed to be driving a 2010 silver Honda Fit with the Illinois license plate DM80653, Jogmen said.
Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Chris Covelli, said the suspect is considered armed and dangerous telling people not to approach him and to call 9-1-1. He said police will release photos of Crimo, who goes by “Bobby,” and is from the area.
Local police said earlier Monday they are working with state and federal law enforcement officials to track down the suspect, whom they described at a press conference as white male with a small build and “longer,” black hair.
Five people were dead on the scene, all adults, officials said in a press conference Monday afternoon. A sixth person who died had been taken to the hospital, they said, without providing further details. There were additional hospital walk-ins from the incident.
Dr. Brigham Temple, an emergency medicine doctor at NorthShore University Health System, said those wounded ranged from age 8 to 85.
Police were going door-to-door to help search for the suspect, Covelli said, urging anyone with video of the parade to share it with law enforcement.
Covelli said a “high-powered rifle” was recovered from the Highland Park scene and that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was investigating the weapon. Police urged people in the area to stay indoors while law enforcement searched for the gunman.
President Joe Biden said he spoke with Illinois Gov. J.B Pritzker and Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering and offered federal support.
“Jill and I are shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day,” Biden said in a written statement.
The shooting comes just days after Congress passed the most significant gun control reform bill in decades.
“I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives,” Biden said. “But there is much more work to do, and I’m not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence.”
The Highland Park shooting occurred less than two months after a lone gunman opened fire on 10 Black shoppers at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store on May 14. Another gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an Uvalde, Texas, elementary school 10 days later.
Portable chairs are left behind on Central Avenue after a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade route in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, on July 4, 2022.
Max Herman | Reuters
Larry Bloom, who was in the area when shots began, told NBC Chicago that at first spectators thought the “popping” sound was part of the parade.
“You heard like a ‘pop, pop, pop,’ and I think everybody kinda thought maybe it was a display on one of the floats and then it just opened up,” Bloom said.
The shooting occurred on the Independence Day parade route. The Lake County Sheriff’s office on Twitter urged people to stay out of the area to “allow law-enforcement and first responders to do their work.”
“This morning at 10:14, our community was terrorized by an act of violence that has shaken us to our core,” Highland Park Mayor Rotering, said at a news conference. “On a day that we came together to celebrate community and freedom, we’re instead mourning … the tragic loss of life and struggling with the terror that was brought upon us.”
Fourth of July events in other Chicago suburbs — Evanston, Deerfield and Skokie — were called off in the wake of the Highland Park shooting, NBC News reported.
HIGHLAND PARK, IL: First responders work the scene of a shooting at a Fourth of July parade on July 4, 2022 in Highland Park, Illinois.
Jim Vondruska | Getty Images News | Getty Images
—Reuters contributed to this report.
