A mother who survived the deadly Independence Day shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, recalled the moments of horror as she was grazed by a bullet while taking her toddler to safety inside her husband’s store.
Abby Brosio was on a family outing at the tragic parade with her two children, 3 and 1, and her in-laws when chaos ensued around 10.20am Monday.
She was standing next to her father-in-law when she realized the shooter, now identified by police as Robert E. Crimo III, 21, randomly fired at attendees from the roof of a business.
‘I was holding my one-year-old and behind us, I thought there was a sound of fireworks and seconds later I realized that’s not what it was, so I believe I hit the ground with my daughter,’ Abby told Good Morning America.
‘… I looked up at the neighboring business across the street and saw the shooter on the roof and I just screamed that it was a shooter.’
Abby rushed to safety inside the Gearhead Outfitters’ store, where her husband, Tony, is the store manager. His father was shot in the leg but is recovering, Tony said.
Harrowing video shows paradegoers rushing inside the store for their safety. Parents holding their children in arms, desperately dodging shells stacked with outdoors gear to the back of the store.
A total of 46 people were injured in the shooting. Seven people were killed.
Among those killed were synagogue teacher Jacki Sundheim, a married mother, and grandfather Nicolas Toledo, 78. Four others have not yet been named.
Abby Brosio (right) was on a family outing at the tragic parade with their two children, 3 and 1, and Tony’s parents when chaos ensued around 10.20am Monday. Abby rushed to safety inside the Gearhead Outfitters’ store, where her husband, Tony, (left) is the store manage
Harrowing video shows paradegoers rushing inside the store for their safety
Abby was standing next to her father-in-law when she realized the shooter, now identified by police as Robert E. Crimo III, 22, (pictured) randomly fired at attendees from the roof of a business
Tony Brosio told Good Morning America he didn’t hesitate to help people inside his store when he realized there was an active shooter situation at the parade.
‘We were just trying to get as many people as we possibly could inside,’ he said. ‘Like I said, it was just instinct.’
Jody Lieberman, who sheltered inside the store, showed his gratefulness with a post on the business’ Facebook page.
‘Tony and the entire staff at Gearhead Highland Park were amazing today,’ she wrote.
‘They were calm in a very dangerous situation and helped the community members and our police responders in the most efficient and caring way. We are thankful to have such amazing individuals in our community.’
The family said their children are still processing the tragedy.
‘I probed my son a little bit yesterday, I asked him a few questions about how the day went and he was like, ”It was good. I got to ride my bike,” Abby said.
”We will have that conversation one day but hopefully, he is dealing with the trauma okay, and we’ll see how it goes from here.”
Many escaped the bullets and sheltered inside the store until they were escorted out by police
Jody Lieberman, who sheltered inside the store, showed his gratefulness with a post on the business’ Facebook page
Parents holding their children in arms desperately dodging shells stacked with outdoors gear to the back of the store
The gunman opened fire at 10.14am on Monday, barely 15 minutes into the parade. He then fled the scene and hid throughout the day before eventually being arrested at 6.30pm in Lake Forrest, eight miles north of where the massacre unfolded
Horror on Independence Day: A police officer bows his head in grief next to abandoned strollers and chairs after a shooting that killed seven people in Highland Park, Illinois
The aftermath of the scene in Highland Park on Monday after a shooter opened fire on the parade. Chairs and strollers were abandoned by attendees
Abby added that while she sheltered in the basement with her two children, she cried in disbelief that her community had become the latest location of yet another mass shooting in the US.
‘You always have that, ”It could never happen here” … It just did,’ Tony told GMA.
His remarks have been echoed by many members of the quiet suburban community, who are grappling with trauma.
Miles Zaremsky, a 74-year-old lawyer and resident of Highland Park since the 60s, also said the incident felt surreal.
‘I did see a little boy [covered in blood] in his parents’ arms who looked [pale]. They were yelling for medics … It’s surreal, it’s like out of a science fiction [movie] but it is real,’ Zaremsky told DailyMail.com.
‘My wife and I have been living in Highland Park since 1966. It is a beautiful, charming, peaceful, law-abiding community. If it can happen here, it can happen in any community in the United States.’
Businesses in the area became shelters for desperate parade attendees who poured inside in an attempt to avoid being shot.
Matt Phillip, 36, the director of the tasting room operating at Lynfred Winery, said at one point there were around 30 people seeking shelter inside his store.
‘We were open early for the parade and upon hearing what sounded like fireworks, we noticed that people started running down the street,” he told DailyMail.com.
‘We opened our doors so they could either seek shelter within our facility or exit through our back-alley door.’
Law enforcement officers look over a park near the scene of a mass shooting at a 4th of July celebration and parade in Highland Park, Illinois
The hours-long manhunt during which residents hunkered down in businesses or received police escorts to their homes, ended with a traffic stop and brief chase Monday evening, when authorities detained Crimo.
They gave no motive for the attack in Highland Park, an affluent community of about 30,000 on Chisago’s north shore.
Dramatic photographs from the scene show the suspected mass murderer – who posted creepy clips about shooting massacres online – being pinned to the ground face-down by police.
Crimo was ‘known to law enforcement’ but it is not yet known if this was due to the disturbing content he shared online, or if he committed other crimes.
It has now emerged his father, Bob Sr, 58, is a local deli owner who once ran for mayor, while his mom, Denise Pesina, 48, was once arrested on suspicion of domestic battery.
She appears to have become a Mormon and is also into alternative therapies, according to her Facebook page.
Music videos posted by Crimo online last fall include a drawing of himself shooting people online, and a disturbing clip of himself throwing bullets on the floor of a classroom while wearing armor in what appears to be a joke about school shootings.
Crimo also had a Discord server where he would chat with friends and fans, and his most recent post was a picture of Budd Dwyer, the Pennsylvania state treasurer who killed himself on live TV in the 1980s, which he captioned: ‘I wish politicians still gave speeches like this.’
Law enforcement officers investigate the scene of a mass shooting at a 4th of July celebration and parade in Highland Park, Illinois, July 4, 2022. A gunman opened fire as people gathered to watch a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens
Police officers cross under police tape at the scene of a mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade
He also made references to suicide and frequently posted on a message board discussing graphic depictions of murder and death, including a recent video he shared of a beheading.
In 2020, Crimo was pictured attending a Donald Trump rally while dressed as Where’s Waldo.
Another picture has emerged showing the suspect wrapped in a Donald Trump flag.
At one of the rallies that Crimo was pictured in Northbrook, Illinois, which the Chicago Tribune described as ‘tense ‘ but said that there were no arrests made as counter-protesters showed up at the event. The ex-president was not present at that rally.
The suspect’s IMDb page describes him as being the middle child of three who grew up in an Italian-American family in Highland Park, Illinois.
In April 2019, Crimo’s father ran for mayor in Highland Park.
It does not appear that his campaign was backed by a political party. His slogan was: ‘A Person for the People.’
Bob Crimo was defeated by the town’s current mayor, Nancy Rotering, a liberal, who ran her campaign partly on a platform about gun control.
While on his Twitter page, Bob Crimo follows one account, an archived account of ex-President Donald Trump’s tweets.
On May 27, the same day that 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Bob Crimo liked a tweet that read: ‘Protect the Second Amendment like your life depends on it.’
The gunman’s father Bob Crimo (left) ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Highland Park in 2019 where he owns a deli. The suspect’s mother Denise Pesina (right) is an alternative healer who was once arrested on suspicion of domestic battery
On May 27, the same day that 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Bob Crimo liked this tweet
Abandoned chairs, strollers, and blankets – once being used by families celebrating the holiday – were left behind in the chaos.
Bloodied bodies were strewn on the ground in the immediate aftermath of the shooting as people frantically fled from the area.
The US has seen 309 mass shootings so far this year in which four or more people, excluding the shooter, were shot or killed. Eleven alone took place over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
President Biden – who has been calling for gun reform since the Uvalde shooting on May 24, which claimed 19 lives – issued a statement on Monday afternoon.
He said he had given his support to the Governor of Illinois and the Highland Park Mayor, and he celebrated his recent passing of a gun control bill.
‘I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives.
‘But there is so much more work to do, and I’m not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence,’ he said.
How shooter climbed ladder to stage rooftop massacre and then disappeared for more than EIGHT hours before cops finally arrested him in dramatic traffic stop
1. Shooter opens fire from rooftop of outdoor supplies store around 10am local time
The location where the shooter was holed up is thought to be on top of Gearheads, an outdoor equipment store. A ladder can be seen propped against its wall in this image taken after the shooting
A close-up shows the ladder propped against the wall of the single-story Gearheads store. It has been suggested that this is where shooter Bobby Crimo opened fire from, although investigators have yet to confirm that this was the ladder he used
According to authorities, the violence began at approximately 10.15am local time, around 15 minutes after the parade began.
Reports say that the gunman climbed an unsecured ladder that was attached to Gearhead Outfitters, an outdoor equipment store formerly known as Uncle Dan’s.
At that point, Crimo opened fire on the crowd, killing seven and injuring dozens more in including the elderly and children. It has not been confirmed for how long the shooting went on for.
Witnesses have now been told how they saw children being picked off in the crowd.
The type of gun used by Crimo in the attack has not been confirmed. Investigators have so far only referred to it as a high-powered rifle.
A witness named Zoe described the scene saying: ‘All of a sudden everyone behind us started running. I looked back, probably 20 feet away from me, I saw a girl shot and killed. I saw her die. I’ve never seen anything like this,’ according to CNN.
Police say they recovered a ‘rifle’ at the scene but witnesses described multiple rounds being fired in quick succession which they say could only have come from a semi-automatic.
‘A rifle? No, no. It was an automatic weapon. It was pop, pop, pop – rifles don’t do that,’ she said.
Law enforcement who were at the parade responded to the shooting, but Crimo quickly fled the scene in a 2010 Honda Fit prompting a multi-agency manhunt.
2. FBI agents search Crimo’s $425,000 family home, which sits just six minutes drive from the location of the shooting
The suspect lives in a small apartment behind his family’s home in Highwood, Illinois
Crimo lives in a small apartment behind his family home along Pleasant Avenue in Highwood, just north of Highland Park. His uncle, Paul Crimo, told CNN that he saw his nephew at home the night before the shooting.
It sits just 1.5 miles away from Gearhads, and is around six minutes drive away from the location of the shooting when traffic is light.
The home is valued at over $400,000. Paul Crimo says that he lives in the home, too. When he last saw the suspect, Paul Crimo says: ‘Everything was as normal’
He said that the home is owned by the suspect’s father, Bob Crimo. The FBI made contact with the family around 2.30pm. Crimo’s father gave investigators permission to search the home.
Paul Crimo went on to tell CNN: ‘He’s a quiet kid. He’s usually on his own. He’s a lonely, quiet person. He keeps everything to himself.’
It’s not clear at what time he left the home to begin his rampage.
3. A subsequent manhunt for Crimo ends with his dramatic roadside arrest just before 7:00 pm
Crimo’s was arrested hours after the massacre in which seven people were killed
Robert Crimo, shown here, was also a rapper who went by the moniker: ‘Awake the Rapper’
The shooter’s uncle Paul Crimo, said he was first contacted by the FBI at 2.30pm local time, reports CNN.
In an evening news conference around 5pm, law enforcement named Crimo as a suspect in the shooting.
Crimo was described as being between 18 and 20 with long black hair, white, ‘slight build’ and wearing a t-shirt. His car was described and cops gave out his license plate number.
Around 7.00pm local time, authorities said in a brief news conference that Crimo was in custody, having been arrested around 30 minutes earlier.
According to Chief Lou Jogmen of the Highland Park Police, Crimo was first spotted by members of a North Chicago police unit. Jogmen said that Crimo fled when officers attempted to pull him over.
Following a brief chase, Crimo came to a stop and was arrested in Lake Forest, Illinois, not far from the area where the shooting occurred.
Synagogue teacher is identified as second victim of Chicago July 4 massacre as family of grandpa, 76, tell how they were splattered with his blood as he was executed
A synagogue teacher has been identified as the second victim of the July 4 Highland Park gun massacre that killed seven people.
Jacki Sundheim, a longtime staffer at North Shore Congregation Israel, was shot and killed when a gunman opened fire at the event, unleashing a hail of bullets on the crowd, the synagogue announced in an email to congregants Monday night.
‘Jacki was a lifelong congregant of NSCI and a cherished member of NSCI’s staff team for decades,’ the synagogue wrote in an email that announced her murder ‘Jacki’s work, kindness and warmth touched us all.’
Sundheim, was the Reform synagogue’s events and b’nei mitzvah coordinator, according to its website. She is survived by her husband Bruce and daughter Leah, the Times of Israel reported.
‘There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jacki’s death,’ the synagogue added.
Jacki Sundheim, a longtime staffer at North Shore Congregation Israel, was shot and killed when a gunman opened fire at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois on Monday
Earlier on Monday evening, a beloved grandfather from Mexico had been identified as one of the victims, by his family, who said he was shot in the head as he sat in his wheelchair, his blood splattering on them.
Nicolas Toledo, 76, had not wanted to attend the parade in Highland Park, Illinois, his granddaughter told the New York Times.
But because of his disabilities that restricted him to a wheelchair, and his family’s insistence on going, he obliged.
Nicolas Toledo, 76, had not wanted to attend the July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, on Monday, his granddaughter told the New York Times. But because of his disabilities that restricted him to a wheelchair, and his family’s insistence of going, he obliged
