WAUKEGAN, IL — The accused Highland Park parade shooter refused to be transported from the Lake County Jail Thursday for his first court appearance since backing out of a plea agreement.
At a case management conference, defense attorneys for Robert “Bobby” Crimo III notified Lake County Circuit Judge Victoria Rossetti that Crimo had declined to leave his cell and asked for his presence to be waived.
“I will waive his presence, however he was advised at the time of his arraignment that if he did not appear we could hold any kind of trial without him being present,” Rossetti said.
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The judge asked Assistant Public Defender Gregory Ticsay to remind Crimo that not only can he be tried in absentia, but hearings and motions can also proceed without him.
Crimo, 23, of Highwood, has been held at Lake County Jail without bail since his initial court appearance, where he was charged with murdering Katie Goldstein, Irina McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, Stephen Straus, Jacki Sundheim, Nicolás Toledo and Eduardo Uvaldo and wounding nearly 50 others when he allegedly opened fire on paradegoers in Highland Park on July 4, 2022.
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In June, prosecutors announced that Crimo had agreed to plead guilty to 55 charges in total, including the seven counts of first-degree murder, a plea deal that would have resulted in a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.
But at the start of what had been expected to be a change of plea and sentencing hearing, Crimo withdrew from the deal. After looking back in the courtroom at an assembled crowd of victims and their families, as well as his own family, Crimo told Rossetti it was not his intention to waive his right to a trial.
Prior to the change of plea hearing, Crimo’s mother, Denise Pesina, filed a complaint with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and petitioned for an emergency order of protection from a Lake County judge on behalf of her son. Both were rejected.
“My public defenders, along with [Lake County State’s Attorney Eric] Rinehart, Judge Rossetti, Sheriff Idleburg, and jail staff, have been torturing me to get me to sign a plea deal,” the petition said. “I am innocent, and I am pictured in an official Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) uniform all day with other official FBI agents, police, and officials, who then participated in framing me and creating evidence.”
At a hearing in April, Associate Judge Bolling Haxall denied the order of protection, noting in his order that Crimo did not adopt the allegations it contained.
The day before, Carolyn Lerner, a judge on the Federal Court of Claims, dismissed Pesina’s complaint, noting that Pesina had submitted hundreds of documents via email that did not count as legal filings.
In addition to the ongoing criminal case in Waukegan, the Illinois State Police face lawsuits from victims’ families in the Illinois Court of Claims in Springfield, a branch of the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office that hears lawsuits filed against state government agencies.
The complaints allege state police could have prevented the massacre if they had acted on prior warning signs, including a 2019 “clear and present danger” report filed after Crimo allegedly threatened to kill his family and attempted suicide with a machete.
“The Shooter’s obsession with violence and weapons is well-documented. A review of his phone after the Fourth of July shooting showed photos of gore, dismembered bodies, and decapitated people,” according to a complaint. “The Shooter also documented his alarming obsession with weapons and violence online, on his own websites and on various social media platforms, including but not limited to, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Tumblr, Discord and Reddit.”
Citing an archive of online videos, the Illinois Court of Claims complaints quote from lyrics to songs Crimo posted under the stage name “Awake the Rapper” and include screenshots of some of the last of the thousands of posts he made on an an obscure internet message board as a user named Awake47 containing racist remarks about Asian, Black and Jewish people.
The complaints against ISP, filed on the eve of the two-year statute of limitations, also included sentences pulled verbatim from pending civil lawsuits filed against the manufacturer of the gun used in the shooting.
The lawsuits point out that Crimo’s father, Robert Crimo Jr., sponsored his son’s application for a Firearm Owner Identification, or FOID, card despite knowing about his violent tendencies and untreated mental health issues.
His sign-off on the FOID card application allowed accused shooter Bobby Crimo to purchase firearms, including the Smith & Wesson M&P rifle used in the parade shooting, but it still needed to be approved by state police.
The older Crimo pleaded guilty to seven counts of misdemeanor reckless conduct in connection with his signature on the eve of a scheduled trial last year, agreeing to spend a couple weeks in jail in exchange for prosecutors reducing the charges from felonies.
Heavily redacted copies of the complaints were first obtained through public records requests by The Center Square, which reported there have been 29 separate claims.
One complaint describes Crimo as having had a “turbulent youth,” during which police visited his home nearly 20 times between 2009 and 2014, including for domestic violence calls.
Despite his troubled history, Crimo was able to obtain a FOID card in 2020, a decision the lawsuits describe as negligence on the part of the Illinois State Police.
“[ISP Troop No. 3] were aware or should have been aware that the Shooter presented a ‘clear and present danger’ which would have disqualified him from obtaining a FOID card prior to the Fourth of July shooting and/or which would have allowed his guns to be taken away from him,” one complaint said.
Families of the victims, represented by attorneys with the firms Romanucci & Blandin and Levin & Perconti, seek a total of $58 million from the state agency — $2 million for each claim.
The lawsuits describe the 2022 Fourth of July shooting as “foreseeable and preventable” and accuse the state of failing to follow procedures that could have disqualified Crimo from obtaining firearms.
Following the shooting ISP officials said they changed the department’s policies regarding “clear and present danger” reports, and state lawmakers passed new firearm regulations, the Protect Illinois Communities Act, which defined guns like the one Crimo is alleged to have used as assault weapons, banned their sale and regulated their possession.
The pending suits in the Illinois Court of Claims are separate from other state civil lawsuits against Crimo and his father, gunmaker Smith & Wesson, firearm retailers involved in the sale of the rifle found at the scene of the shooting.
At Thursday’s hearing in Crimo’s murder trial, Rossetti set a status hearing for Oct. 2 for both sides to finish filing motions and scheduled a Nov. 14 hearing to argue all pending motions.
Prosecutors have previously filed motions indicating that they intend to submit as evidence the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives trace summary that shows that Crimo legally purchased the rifle in question on Feb. 13, 2020, as well as bank records showing he spent about $570 on it.
They also plan to call as a witness a former school resource officer from Highland Park High School, who identified Crimo from surveillance photos on the day of the shooting.
Crimo’s trial is scheduled for February 2025.
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