WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT 

Six people are dead including five adults who were killed at the Independence Day parade in Highland Park, one of the most affluent suburbs in Chicago’s North Shore, known for its low crime .

The sixth victim died in the hospital, and an additional 24 people were treated in hospital, aged from 8 to 85

The shooter opened fire on crowds at the Highland Park July 4th Parade at 10.20am on Monday morning

The gunman used an automatic rifle that he abandoned before going on the run

Authorities arrested local resident Robert ‘Bobby’ Crimo III also known as Awake the Rapper as the suspect

Crimo, 22, is in custody awaiting charges for yesterday’s Highland Park parade massacre 

The shooter is believed to have opened fire from the roof of a store on the parade route 

His online profile includes a rap video with images of him dropping bullets and with a rifle in a classroom

‘My actions will be valiant, I know what I have to do, it is my destiny’, he says

Crimo operated two channels both of which have been deleted for ‘violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines’

He’d Crimo planned the attack for several weeks before he climbed a fire escape ladder and fired on the crowd from the roof of a building

Dressed as a woman in order to evade detection, after firing more than 70 rounds, Crimo exited the roof, dropped the rifle, slipped into the crowd and went to his mother’s house, authorities said

A gunman celebrated Independence Day in a Chicago suburb by turning the parade into a shooting gallery after he opened fire as people gathered to watch a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, The suspect, a 22 year-old rapper was arrested hours later on suspicion of shooting and killing six people at a July 4 parade in the affluent Chicago suburb. Another 24 were people were injured as a result of gunfire.
Those killed were all adults, but only two have been identified so far – a caring grandfather and a woman remembered for her warmth and kindness. Those injured ranging in age from eight to 85, were treated and released, with six still receiving hospital treatment. 
The alleged shooter, local resident Robert ‘Bobby’ Crimo III, was intercepted by cops in North Lake Forest, Chicago, at 6.30pm on Monday, after an eight-hour manhunt. His arrest was made when cops spotted the silver Honda Fit he was last seen driving.
Highland Park is around 30 miles north of the city of Chicago and is a quiet, suburban area, with a population of around 30,000. 
Authorities say Crimo opened fire from a rooftop, into a crowd who at first confused the sound of gunshots with Independence Day fireworks. 
Apparently he’d planned the attack for several weeks before he climbed a fire escape ladder and fired on the crowd from the roof of a building.
Dressed as a woman in order to evade detection, after firing more than 70 rounds, Crimo exited the roof, dropped the rifle, slipped into the crowd and went to his mother’s house, authorities said at a news conference Tuesday.

the shooter’s family spoke to the FBI on Monday yesterday before he was finally tracked down in Lake Forest, eight miles north of the parade route where he is accused of opening fire at 10.15am. The shooter’s uncle Paul Crimo, has since said he was behaving normally on Sunday night. He claims he showed ‘no signs of violence’ – despite YouTube rap videos in which he glamorized school shootings. Robert Crimo’s motive for yesterday’s attack remains unknown. 
Crimo is from of the Highland Park area and posted rap videos online using the name Awake. In one song, the suspect wrote: ‘My actions will be valiant and my thought is unnecessary, I know what I have to do, I know what’s in it, not only for me, but for everyone else.’
The doom-laden words were set to drawings of a figure who looked like Crimo pointing a rifle. At one point, a grab of a newspaper clipping about JFK’s murderer Lee Harvey Oswald is visible.

Police said earlier that they were trying to trace the weapon they found back to its owner in the hopes it will lead them to him
An IMDb page about the suspect describes him as a ‘rapper, singer, songwriter, actor and director from Chicago.’
The most viewed video on the rapper’s YouTube channel is the music video for his song: ‘On My Mind.’ The video, showing a the suspect in a classroom. 
It starts off innocuously enough, with Crimo rapping about a classmate he has a crush on. But two thirds of the way through Crimo reaches into his bag.
Then the screen goes blank, with the next scene showing the same classroom trashed. Crimo is then seen wearing a combat helmet, and scattering gold bullets onto the floor of the classroom in what appears to be a possible teaser of what he has been planning for months. 
Crimo operated two channels both of which have been deleted for ‘violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.’ 

The track begins as a slow ballad, including the lines: ‘You’re always on my mind. Cutie with the fat ass, I wanna make you mine. I’m running out of time. Shorty we can skip class, smoke and chill online.’
The song has a sudden change in tempo and shows Crimo reaching into a backpack. The screen goes black and when the music returns it’s dubbed with maniacal laughter and, fast paced piano music and a heavy drum beat. 
The video then shows the classroom ransacked with the suspect smiling. 
His IMDb page describes him as being the middle child of three who grew up in an Italian-American family in Highland Park, Illinois. 
His father Bob runs a local deli, and once ran unsuccessfully to become mayor of the affluent neighborhood.  

The bio goes on to say that his music career began when he was 11 when Crimo began uploading music online. 
His music is in the genre of LoFi rap, according to his Spotify page. He has released three albums, the first in 2017 titled ‘Messages,’ that was followed with 2018’s ‘Observer’ and 2021’s self-titled ‘Awake the Rapper.’ 
This year he released an EP titled: ‘Brainwashed.’ The tracks included: ‘Dead Again’ and ‘I Am the Storm.’
Crimo has an average of 16,46 listens per month on Spotify. 
n his most recent tweet from October 2021 on his artist Twitter page, the suspect tweeted: ‘I am not a robot.’ 

Crimo appears to have longstanding ties to the Highland Park-area with his father, Bob Crimo, running for mayor of the town in 2019. It does not appear that his campaign was backed by a political party. His slogan was a: ‘A Person for the People.’
Bob Crimo is the owner of Bob’s Pantry and Deli in Highland Park. In a 2018 feature with the Chicago Tribune, Bob Crimo was pictured with his wife, Denise. He describes his restaurant as a ‘family-run and family-orientated store.’

The parade had only begun 14 minutes before the gunman opened fire from a rooftop along the route. The shooting caused a stampede of people who flocked into stores and cars. The parade was scheduled to last for an hour.
The gunman’s attack began less than 15 minutes after the start of the parade. Witnesses have now told how they saw children being picked off in the crowd. 
Six people are dead including five adults who were killed at the parade. The sixth victim died in the hospital. Their age is not yet known. 
Nicholas Toledo, a grandfather, was among those killed. His family confirmed his death to CBS.  
Chilling videos replay how the gunman first unleashed one long hail of bullets before stopping – presumably to reload – and then resuming fire. 

Brigham Temple, the medical director of emergency preparedness for Northshore university health system, said they received 20 patients aged between eight and 85 – 10 of them by ambulance.
Four of five patients were children, he said. One of the children who arrived at Northshore was too critically ill to be transported initially. He was stabilized and airlifted to a children’s hospital in Chicago. 
Temple said some of the patients were in critical condition.
Of the 25 who arrived at the hospital with gunshot wounds, 19 were treated and discharged home.**One had to be transferred to Evanston hospital. Two patients are still being treated at Northshore. 
‘It is a little surreal to take care of an event such as this,’ he said.
‘But all of us have undergone extensive training.’
He said there was a team of therapists and counsellors standing by. His hospital was one of three taking in patients from the parade shooting.
A statement from the Township High School District 113 said that all members of the Highland Park High School marching band and members of the school’s football team are safe and accounted for.  While agents continued to hunt the shooter on Monday afternoon who was described as a white male, aged 18-20, with long black hair and a slight build ATF agents tried to trace his high powered weapon to a name in order to track him down. It was revealed the shooter climbed onto the roof of a business with a ladder from an alley.

The Governor of Illinois was among the first to call for an end to gun violence while other Democrats – who have been relentlessly demanding gun reform since the Uvalde school shooting on May 24 – invoked irony to make renew their calls for change.
‘The fact that no place in the USA is safe from gun terror means no place is truly free. Heartbroken for Highland Park,’ Katherine Clark, Assistant Speaker of the U.S. House, tweeted. 
Witnesses described seeing children being shot at the parade. All of the confirmed deaths so far are those of adults.
‘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,’ a woman, who gave her name only as Zoe, told 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.
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. 
Governor JB Pritzker said in a statement: ‘There are no words for the kind of monster who lies in wait and fires into a crowd of families with children celebrating a holiday with their community.
‘There are no words for the kind of evil that robs our neighbors of their hopes, their dreams, their futures. ‘There are no words I can offer to lift the pain of those they live behind. I will stand firm with Illinoisans and Americans: we must – and we will – end  this plague of gun violence.’ 
A woman who witnessed a little girl being shot in the head, said the event was for children and dogs who had just passed by when the gunman opened fire. 
‘There are no words I can offer to lift the pain of those they live behind. I will stand firm with Illinoisans and Americans: we must – and we will – end  this plague of gun violence.’ 
‘One man had been shot in the head, his ear, he was bleeding all over, and he was, like, I’m just happy that’s all happened. There was another girl that got escorted out that was shot in the leg. We were hiding in the basement for quite a while.
‘There are no words I can offer to lift the pain of those they live behind. I will stand firm with Illinoisans and Americans: we must – and we will – end  this plague of gun violence.’ 
‘There are no words I can offer to lift the pain of those they live behind. I will stand firm with Illinoisans and Americans: we must – and we will – end  this plague of gun violence.’ 

Witnesses described a ‘sickening’ scene and is it feared that children are among the dead. 
‘I saw multiple lifeless bodies, people in a pool of blood. One father, who survived with his kids, tossed his son in a dumpster. 
A toddler who was separated from his parents at the parade ended up briefly in the care of strangers at the local hospital. He is unharmed and seems to be in good spirits. A local chef picked him up as people ran for their lives, before taking him to the hospital where his grandparents later came to collected him.