By Kanishka Singh
(Reuters) – Authorities were called to the home of the Highland Park shooting suspect’s parents numerous times between 2010 and 2014, according to police records released on Friday as funerals took place for three of those killed at a July 4 parade.
Most of the nine incidents documented by the Highland Park, Illinois, police involved allegations of verbal or physical altercations between the suspect’s parents, Robert Crimo Jr. and Denise Pesina. The incidents were first reported by the Chicago Tribune.
“I am tired of being called names” by the suspect’s father, Pesina had said in one written statement in 2010. “He threatens to call the police for any and every argument we get in. He says he wants the police to think I’m crazy.”
During an alleged altercation in August 2010, Crimo Jr. told police that Pesina had struck him in the head with her shoe and was intoxicated.
Robert Crimo, the 21-year-old man accused of killing seven people and wounding dozens others at an Independence Day parade outside of Chicago, faces seven counts of first-degree murder.
Friday marked the first day of funerals for the victims, with three of them being laid to rest. Services were planned for Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63, who was a teacher at a nearby synagogue; Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, a grandfather who came from Mexico to visit his family; and Steve Straus, 88, who worked as a stockbroker.
The suspect’s father told media earlier this week that he was not culpable in the Independence Day attack, in spite of having signed a consent form for his son to apply for gun ownership.
The suspect himself had come to law enforcement’s attention on two prior occasions in 2019 for alleged behavior suggesting he might harm himself or others, authorities said earlier this week.
“I had no – not an inkling, warning – that this was going to happen,” Crimo Jr. told ABC News about the Fourth of July attack his son allegedly carried out. “I am just shocked.”
The suspect admitted to authorities that he carried out the shooting, a prosecutor said on Wednesday during his first court appearance.
Authorities also said that the suspect had planned the July 4 Illinois attack for weeks. As the annual parade marched through downtown Highland Park, he climbed onto a rooftop from an alley and fired more than 70 rounds at spectators, they said.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Frank McGurty and Sandra Maler)
