A 22-year-old suspect named Robert E Crimo III was arrested in connection with the July 4 parade shooting in Chicago that killed six and wounded more than 36, reported news agency Reuters. The man with a high-powered rifle opened fire from a rooftop at the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. The Highland Park Police has confirmed that the suspect has been captured and charges will be filed.
Here’s what happened in the shootout
A video by the Chicago affiliate of ABC News showed Crimo exiting a vehicle surrounded by the police with his hands raised. He then lies flat on the ground before taken into custody.
The gun shots injured more than 36 people, said Jim Anthony, a spokesperson for the NorthShore University HealthSystem. Around 26 victims between the age group of 8 to 85 were taken to the Highland Park hospital, said Brigham Temple, an emergency room doctor.
According to the The New York Times report, one of the dead was a 76-year-old man Nicolas Toledo, who was bound by a wheelchair and didn’t wish to attend the parade. However, his disabilities required that he is under supervision and his family had not wanted to miss the event.
At least one of those killed was a Mexican national, a senior Mexican Foreign Ministry official said on Twitter.
In an online poster of Crimo shared by the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, the suspect is seen as a thin-faced bearded man with tattoos on face and neck. It said he weighed 120 pounds (54 kg) and was 5 feet 11 inches (1 meter 80 cms) tall.
The suspect appears to have published several self-made rap songs using the artist stage name “Awake The Rapper.” A video by Awake The Rapper shows a drawing of a stick figure holding a rifle in front of an another figure spread on the ground.
YouTube recently terminated an associated user account, after the police named Crimo.
The gunman reached the rooftop of the business from where he took shots with an alley ladder attached to the building that was not secure.
President Joe Biden said he and his wife Jill were “shocked by the senseless gun violence that has once again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day.”
Biden said he had “surged federal law enforcement to assist in the urgent search for the shooter.”
In his statement, Biden referred to bipartisan gun-reform legislation he signed recently but said much more is needed to be done and added: “I’m not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence.”
The Highland Park July 4 parade shooting comes after 19 school children and two teachers were killed in a shooting incident at a school in Uvalde, Texas last month. This school shootout was followed by a May 14 attack that killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
In June, a Supreme Court ruling in the US that struck down a century-old gun restrictions had attracted huge criticism.