Highland Park Parade Gunman Robert Crimo III Changes Plea as Trial Kicks Off

Nam Y. Huh/AP photo

The gunman accused of spraying a July 4 parade with bullets in 2022, killing seven people in a suburban Chicago town, has changed his plea.

Robert Crimo III, 23, withdrew his not guilty plea in the Highland Park bloodbath trial Monday, just before opening arguments were set to begin at his murder trial.

He was charged with 21 counts of murder, three for each person killed in the shooting. He was also facing 48 counts of attempted murder.

At one point in the proceedings, Crimo’s mother Denise Pesina had a brief outburst and was given a warning by the judge, the Associated Press reported.

After Crimo’s arrest, law enforcement revealed that he had two run-ins with police in 2019 that included having 16 knives, a dagger, and a sword confiscated.

In December, 2019, Crimo’s father sponsored his son’s application for a Firearm Owners Identification, or FOID, Card.

Crimo was known to be a rapper on YouTube with a fascination for shootings and macabre topics. In a video he posted to his YouTube channel, Crimo is seen inside a classroom, and he seems to dramatize a school shooting before showing a cartoon of someone lying in a pool of blood. The video also featured a newspaper clipping about Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin who killed President John F. Kennedy.

Killed in the shootings were Katherine Goldstein, Irina McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, Stephen Straus, Jacquelyn Sundheim, Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza and Eduardo Uvaldo.

Dozens more were injured, including Cooper Roberts, an 8-year-old boy left paralyzed from the waist down, according to CNN.