Robert E. Crimo Jr., right talks as he appears before Judge George D. Strickland at the Lake County Courthouse, Monday, Nov. 6, 2023, in Waukegan, Ill. The father of a man charged with fatally shooting seven people at a Fourth of July parade in suburban Chicago is scheduled for a bench trial started Monday on charges that he helped his son obtain a gun license years before the attack. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, Pool)
The father of a man who allegedly killed seven people and injured dozens more in a Fourth of July mass shooting will spend time behind bars for helping his son get a permit to buy assault weapons used in the attack.
Robert Crimo Jr. pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanor counts of reckless conduct, prosecutors in Illinois announced Monday — the same day his trial was supposed to start. As part of the deal, Crimo Jr. will serve 60 days in Lake County Jail and two years on probation. He was originally charged with felonies and faced a potential maximum of three years behind bars.
Crimo Jr.’s son, Robert Crimo III, allegedly opened fire on the Independence Day parade in Highland Park, a suburb some 20 miles north of Chicago, in 2022. In 2019, Crimo Jr., a failed candidate for Highland Park mayor, helped his son — who was 21 years old at the time of the shooting — procure a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card, a requirement for legal ownership of a firearm in Illinois.
“Robert Crimo Jr., the father, made the reckless and dangerous decision to sponsor his son’s FOID application,” Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said, according to local ABC affiliate WLS. “This wasn’t a fishing license. This wasn’t a permission slip to go to the museum. This was a permission slip for his son to buy an assault rifle.”
At a press conference Monday, Rinehart said that when Crimo Jr. “sponsored that FOID application, he placed the lives of hundreds in jeopardy.”
Rinehart said that parents of young adults who carry out mass shooting attacks to date have not been held responsible.
“That era has come to an end,” Rinehart said.
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“We’ve laid down a beacon, a marker,” he also said, adding that he hoped other localities would follow in Lake County’s footsteps and pursue such prosecutions. He noted that the plea deal is not a cause for celebration for the families of the victims, but it does send a message of hope.
The prosecutor said that he hoped that by holding Crimo Jr. accountable and sending him to jail, the county would send a message: “There will be a cost. Justice will have its day.”
Rinehart said that Crimo Jr. will not be asked to testify at his son’s trial. A date for that trial has not yet been set.
According to Crimo Jr.’s indictment, he “signed, as a sponsor, the parent/legal guardian Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card affidavit” for Crimo III, who at the time was too young to get a FOID card himself and therefore needed permission.
Prosecutors alleged that Crimo Jr. was aware at the time he helped him get the FOID card that his son had “expressed violent ideation,” including having tried to “commit suicide by machete” and had threatened to use his knife collection to “kill everyone.”
The prosecution of Crimo Jr. is one of at least three high-profile cases in which parents have been charged in connection with gun violence carried out by their children. In Michigan, the parents of Ethan Crumbley, who killed four of his classmates in a November 2021 shooting, are facing manslaughter charges for allegedly buying their son the gun he used in the attack despite knowing that he was troubled. In Virginia, the mother of a 6-year-old child who shot elementary school teacher Abby Zwerner with a gun he brought from home pleaded guilty to felony child neglect.
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