Relatives of the victims of a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., two summers ago somberly filed into a courtroom on Wednesday morning.
They had assembled with a hopeful expectation: that the accused gunman had agreed to change his plea in the murders of seven people to guilty, bringing some measure of resolution to the residents of Highland Park, a quiet, upscale suburb 25 miles north of Chicago, and sparing the families the pain of a trial next spring.
But the families left the courtroom in anguish and disgust. The accused, Robert Crimo III, 23, rejected a plea agreement that lawyers were preparing to present to a judge, dealing a blow to prosecutors, his own public defenders and the families of the victims, who sat in shocked silence when he told the judge that he would stick with his earlier plea of not guilty.
“We came to court today in hopes that we could put this out of our minds,” Leah Sundheim, the daughter of one of the victims, Jacquelyn Sundheim, said afterward. “All I wanted was to be able to fully grieve my mom.”
The hearing in Lake County, Ill., began with a prosecutor, Ben Dillon, announcing that Mr. Crimo had agreed to plead guilty to seven counts of first-degree murder and 48 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm. In addition to seven people who were killed when gunfire broke out during the parade in 2022, dozens more were wounded. Mr. Crimo’s parents, Robert Crimo Jr., and Denise Pesina, sat in the gallery directly behind him.
Judge Victoria A. Rossetti turned to the younger Mr. Crimo, who had entered the courtroom with a blank expression and using a wheelchair, and asked him to affirm that he had discussed the agreement outlined by the prosecutor with his lawyers. He refused to speak, and the judge ordered the court into recess.
When the defendant and his lawyers returned after several minutes, Judge Rossetti questioned him again.
“Do you wish to go forward?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
Mr. Crimo has been an unpredictable defendant in the courtroom over the last two years, once telling the judge that he wished to represent himself, then changing his mind weeks later and requesting a public defender.
Eric Rinehart, the top prosecutor in Lake County, did not answer questions after the hearing but said that he would be ready for trial.
Highland Park was devastated by the shooting that erupted on July 4, 2022. According to prosecutors, the accused gunman, then 21 years old, climbed onto the rooftop of a business in Highland Park’s idyllic downtown, where residents had lined the streets for the summertime parade. After he fired at paradegoers from above, he escaped by blending into the crowd, the authorities said.
He was arrested hours later in a nearby town after his car was spotted.
Killed in the shooting were Katherine Goldstein, 64; Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37, a couple who left behind a toddler son; Stephen Straus, 88, a financial adviser; Ms. Sundheim, 63, an employee of a local synagogue; Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, who had recently moved back to Highland Park from Mexico; and Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, a grandfather and bowling champion.
The elder Mr. Crimo faced intense scrutiny and criminal charges for his own role in the shooting. Prosecutors said that he had ignored obvious signs that his son was capable of violence — the younger Mr. Crimo once promised to “kill everyone” in the family home, prosecutors said, had expressed interest in committing a mass shooting in an exchange with a camp counselor and later sent text messages suggesting that he wanted to end his own life.
Mr. Crimo sponsored his son’s application for a state gun ownership permit, a step that was required for his son to receive the permit because of his age, 19 at the time. The father pleaded guilty in 2023 to seven misdemeanor counts of reckless conduct.
In 2023, on the first anniversary of the attack, officials in Highland Park decided not to hold a traditional parade. Instead, the city honored the holiday and the anniversary with a memorial ceremony, a community walk, a picnic and a concert.
The parade will resume next month, officials said, though it will take a new route through downtown Highland Park.
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