Highland Park, a year later: Reclaiming a town, rebuilding resiliency, finding a voice
Shane Selig often volunteered to help manage the Highland Park Independence Day parade, a typically low-stress job where the biggest threat to public safety occurred when people carelessly walked in front of floats or children darted into the street to grab poorly tossed candy.
These are the so-called dangers that weighed mostly heavily on his mind as he pedaled down Central Avenue on July 4, 2022. The parade had begun about 15 minutes earlier, bringing the usual mix of marching bands, local veterans and politicians that made it one of the most well-attended Fourth of July events along the North Shore.
That’s when Selig heard the pop.
He thought it was a firecracker. Many people assumed it was a firecracker at first, a reflection of how small a role gun violence had played in the affluent community.
Selig swung his bike around and headed toward the sound as spectators ran the other way. He saw someone lying on the ground, showing no signs of life. He started CPR.
The popping sounds continued. He sought cover. A police officer pulled out his gun.
By then, Selig knew.
These weren’t firecrackers.
He was in the middle of a mass shooting, a mere secondslong attack in which seven people were killed and 48 others injured.
Highland Park will mark the tragedy Tuesday with a series of somber events meant to balance the diverse needs of a community permanently scarred — both physically and emotionally — by the shooting. The day will begin with a remembrance ceremony at City Hall to honor those killed: Katherine Goldstein, Irina McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, Jacquelyn Sundheim, Stephen Straus, Nicolas Toledo-Zargoza and Eduardo Uvaldo.
There will be a moment of silence at 10:14 a.m. to mark the first shots fired, followed by a community walk at 11 a.m. down the traditional parade route. There will be no floats, no performers, no official spectators. Attendees must pre-register and pass through metal detectors to participate.
City officials have said the walk symbolizes the community’s desire to reclaim the town and rebuild its resiliency. Those efforts, however, began organically in the days and weeks immediately after the tragedy and continue to grow.
It’s rooted in paradegoers like Selig, who returned home from the shooting covered in blood and determined to do something. He has since visited Springfield and Washington, D.C., to advocate for change. He doesn’t push for a specific policy, but he feels certain that people should know what assault rifles can do and that fears about mass shootings shouldn’t be part of American life.
“I wasn’t able to save everyone that day,” said Selig, a software engineering manager trained in emergency response. “But I’m still trying to do something.”
Other survivors have used their voices in similar ways, pressing lawmakers to pass tougher gun laws. Dozens have filed lawsuits aimed at gun manufacturers, two gun stores, the 22-year-old alleged shooter, Robert E. Crimo III, and his father.
And many of them share their stories — traumatic, painful stories — over and over again, in the hopes that people listen. Each telling, without question, an act of reclamation and rebuilding.
Joe Leslie, his wife and their two young children were watching a military float roll past when the shooting started. He grabbed his oldest daughter, his wife grabbed the younger one, and they began running. The couple lost each other amid the chaos, as they focused solely on getting a child out of harm’s way.
She dove into nearby bushes. He ran into a nearby Starbucks and sheltered in a large bathroom there, with about 30 other terrified parade attendees.
After about 10 minutes in the coffee shop, Leslie, his 4-year-old daughter and some others ran to a nearby apartment building because they thought it would be safer. They spent about 45 minutes in the building’s stairwell, listening for sounds of more shooting before a woman welcomed them into her apartment, he said.
He tried to keep his daughter calm, an arduous task given the number of people screaming and crying.
“I was just telling her that we’re playing a game,” Leslie said. “She was freaking out a little, but I downplayed it as best I could. And after a while she calmed down and was vaguely normal about it.”
The girl is now 5.
“She doesn’t know what happened that day,” he said. “I’m sure she’ll find out in the not-too-distant future, in some way. We’ll probably have to explain it to her. But for now she’s kind of blissfully oblivious.”
Leslie, for his part, is frustrated. A native of England, he knows that gun violence is a uniquely American epidemic. He doesn’t want to be political, but the statistics are undeniable. The homicide rate from gun violence in the United States is 22 times greater than the European Union and 23 times greater than Australia, according to a 2022 report published by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
“I’m kind of beating a drum that’s been beaten many times, but you compare it to other countries and the numbers tell a story,” Leslie said. “The reason that I mention this is, that way there is no closure for us from this. I don’t feel like this has been resolved. It’s not like someone did something and then they were punished. It’s like there’s an existential threat, always. This is the situation for everyone in the U.S.”
Within two days of the shooting, a gun violence prevention group called March Fourth formed. The group held a demonstration in Washington, D.C., on July 13, 2022, with many Highland Park survivors among the 500 participants.
Using a combination of unassailable facts and raw emotion, the organization has since lobbied members of Congress to pass an assault weapons ban.
“March Fourth is doing great work and pushing our government in the right direction,” said Northbrook resident Carrie Mangoubi, a spectator at the 2022 parade, “but it takes time. I just wish that we would have policies in place already to protect the innocent people in our country.”
Mangoubi, her husband and their three kids fled the parade scene after hearing people shouting about a shooter just a couple of blocks away. She struggled with PTSD symptoms for a couple of months after the parade, including a racing heart, flashbacks of her family running for safety and persistent fears about her children’s future.
“I think the experience made me a lot more aware of different vulnerabilities in our lives,” she said. ”Some we can control. Some we can’t control. And we just have to be as careful as possible.”
‘This pervasive threat’
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering has spent the past year addressing those vulnerabilities, as she spoke directly with President Joseph Biden about the need for an assault weapons ban and lobbied lawmakers for tougher laws. A week after the shooting, she stood on the White House lawn and called for a ban on high-capacity magazines like the one used in her town’s shooting.
She had been walking in the parade when the first shot was fired, followed by 82 more from three 30-round magazines. She does not believe the tragedy has come to define her city, but it unquestionably is now part of its fabric. Some residents tell her they cannot deal with large crowds, feel unexpected waves of emotion or are startled by loud noises, she said.
Many Americans may have followed the Highland Park shooting on the news for a day or two, Rotering said, but then they returned to their every day lives. People in her town are still living with it.
“A traumatic and terrorizing event like this doesn’t go away,” she said.
The mayor has heard hundreds of stories about irremediable loss and fears like people had never experienced. As a result, city leaders have taken a trauma-informed approach in planning this year’s Fourth of July commemoration, being careful with words and deliberative in planning how to remember the shooting.
One third grader on a class visit to City Hall asked Rotering if they’d ever again get to celebrate Independence Day. It broke her heart, she said.
“And I promised them that, absolutely, we will be able to celebrate the Fourth of July again, but first, we need to remember our neighbors and what they lost last year and then as a community reclaim that space,” she said.
Though sensitive to the needs of residents — including members of her family — who were at the parade, Rotering has been aggressive in her support for tougher gun laws. In addition to lobbying at the federal level, she was a strong supporter of a new Illinois law banning the sale of military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the legislation shortly after its passage, with Rotering standing behind him. Highland Park has had a similar ban since 2013 and it survived a court challenge two years later, when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a lower-court ruling upholding the local law.
There are multiple lawsuits arguing the Illinois law is unconstitutional. Rotering has expressed confidence it will survive those legal battles.
The parade shooting, however, proves that states and local communities cannot be lone islands in gun control efforts, she said. She has long argued it will require a national assault ban to address the problem.
“For us to think we’re celebrating freedom when we live with this pervasive threat is not accurate,” she said. “We are not currently free until these weapons are taken out of the hands of civilians.”
While Rotering has taken the fight to Illinois lawmakers and the U.S. Congress, several shooting victims brought it directly to gun manufacturers. Dozens of people who were shot or whose family members were killed have filed a lawsuit against Smith & Wesson, which produced the M&P15 rifle that authorities say Crimo used when he opened fire from atop a building along the parade route.
Gun manufacturers have historically been protected from lawsuits like this under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a law Congress passed in 2005 that gives gun manufacturers and dealers broad immunity from lawsuits. Attorneys, however, believe they have found an exception that will allow the case to proceed, arguing Smith & Wesson violated Illinois consumer protection laws by using deceptive marketing and advertising to sell the M&P15 as a military weapon to civilians.
It was people like Crimo, the lawsuit contends, that Smith & Wesson targeted as the company sought to make more money through such marketing, which also promised “more adrenaline” and encouraged consumers to “kick brass.”
Crimo purchased the weapon online from a Kentucky gun shop and picked up the weapon at a suburban gun store, which facilitated the legal transfer, the lawsuit said. Both businesses knew Crimo had addresses in Highland Park and Highwood, the lawsuit said, and that he was a “resident of a municipality that prohibited the possession of such weapons.”
The former YouTube rapper has pleaded not guilty to 117 charges, including 21 counts of first-degree murder stemming from the mass shooting. He remains in Lake County Jail pending trial.
His father, Robert Crimo Jr., is named as a defendant because he sponsored his son’s application for a gun permit, which is required for gun purchases in Illinois, despite knowing that Highland Park police were called to a Crimo home twice, once because the younger Crimo had attempted suicide and another time because he had threatened family members.
The elder Crimo also faces criminal charges in connection with the shooting, having been charged with seven counts of reckless conduct for helping his son obtain a gun license. He has pleaded not guilty.
‘Is this what death is?’
Lauren Bennett is among the shooting victims who joined the lawsuit, which was filed in Lake County last September. She had just grabbed a cup of coffee and rejoined her family at a prime spot in front of Walker Bros. Original Pancake House when she heard a popping sound and saw something flying.
She felt a twinge at her hip, looked down and saw blood.
“We’re under attack,” she screamed.
She stood up to run. Another bullet hit her in the back. She dove into a bush, separated from her family.
“OK, I’ve been shot. Am I dying? Is this what death is?” she thought to herself.
Time seemed to stall as she hid. She saw bodies on the ground amid pooling blood. Adults screamed and kids cried. It seemed like an entire militia was attacking, she recalled.
“And I remember thinking, ‘No, this is not it. We’re not done yet,’” Bennett said.
She jumped up when she saw her husband and two younger sons, 7 and 10 years old, rushing past. Her mother-in-law, who had been shot too, had a candy bag wrapped around her arm. Bennett would later learn her own mother had also been struck by shrapnel.
The family ran to the car and raced to Highland Park Hospital. Bennett was the first patient to arrive, she said. She told emergency department staff what was coming. They checked her vitals, looked at her wounds and put in an IV.
Within minutes, victims began flooding in. Several were more severely injured than Bennett, she recalled.
Her hip wound continued to bleed for the next six weeks. She could walk, but not well. She couldn’t be upright for long. It wasn’t until over a month after the shooting that the pain began to subside.
“That’s when my brain started dealing with the trauma of the day,” she said. “I had to heal first, and then we could deal with the mind.”
As she readjusted, Bennett focused on her kids. She drove out to her 13-year-old son’s summer camp in Minnesota, “just to show him that I was here, and I was alive. I could stand, I could walk. Mom was gonna be OK.”
Therapy has helped, but nothing more than the close-knit family she leans on, she said. They saw what she saw.
In addition to joining the lawsuit, she has pushed lawmakers to pass an assault weapons ban. Each time she tells her story, she relives the fear, chaos and pain of that day.
It is a small price to pay if it leads to change, she said. There aren’t many people who can look her in the face and say owning an assault rifle is more important than her life or any other life, she said.
She knows some people don’t want to hear that.
“I’ll make them hear it,” Bennett said.
Attorney Antonio Romanucci, whose Romanucci & Blandin law firm represents many of the victims and their families, says the shooting has changed his clients’ lives in a multitude of ways. They see and hear things differently. They live with an anger that does not ebb, he said, and it leaves them uniquely determined.
“Not only do they retain that anger, but they want to make damn sure that there is change,” Romanucci said. “That’s why they’ve been to Washington, and that’s why they’ve been to Springfield. And that’s why they visit with the governor and the president of our country, because they want change.”
‘And yet you can’t accept it’
Some mental health experts say advocating for change can help survivors cope after traumatic events. Tali Raviv, a clinical psychologist and associate director of the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children’s Hospital, has seen the positive impact advocacy efforts have on people coping with trauma.
“The amount of suffering that continues and multiplies from these kinds of incidents is really just devastating,” Raviv said. “This is the reason I think we all need to be more vocal for advocating for gun control and those kinds of things. I think a really good, healthy way of coping when you’ve been through something like this is to get yourself involved in advocacy. Whatever that looks like for you, regardless of your political orientation. Doing something to make a change — whether that’s advocating for more mental health supports, whether that’s advocating for more gun control — whatever that is.”
Jon Straus, whose father was killed in the shooting, is among those trying to do something.
His 88-year-old father, Stephen, took his family to Highland Park’s Fourth of July parade nearly every year as he raised his family. He loved to be where the action was, so he went by himself last summer and was fatally shot.
In the year since the shooting, Straus has become the primary caretaker for his mother, Linda. He also helped sell the family home where Jon grew up and Linda spent most of her 59-year marriage with Stephen.
Jon Straus isn’t sure what he’ll do this July 4, but he doubts the day will be harder or easier than any day over the last year. Even now, the adjustments continue. At some point, he accepted his father’s death, he said.
“And yet you can’t accept it,” he said. “It just kind of gnaws at you, that things ended that way.”
He says he’s angered, both by his father’s senseless death and the fact that mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States. He has joined others in the lawsuits because, in part, he worries that mass shootings have become so frequent — there were 647 shootings in 2022 in which four or more people were wounded or killed, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks mass events — that the issue has grown stale.
It’s hard for other people to understand how a loved one can be taken away so suddenly and senselessly and how that changes one’s life, he said. But he wants them to think about it.
“It happens. Are you OK with it or not?” he said. “And it seems like some people are.”
Dr. Brigham Temple, an emergency medicine physician, fled the parade route with his family when he saw high school band members running away. By the time he got to his car, his pager alerted him to the victims en route to the medical center.
Fifteen minutes later, he was in the emergency department running a mass shooting response, one of many similar plans he’s made as NorthShore University HealthSystem’s emergency preparedness director.
As nearly two dozen people arrived at the hospital by foot, car and ambulance, Temple assessed their vital signs and breathing. He checked their wounds and, if they could talk, listened to what they were saying about their injuries.
Between patients, he told the influx of volunteer nurses and physician assistants what to do. He saw more patients that day than he had ever seen, running on adrenaline and awe at the well-coordinated effort executed by a hospital staff that dropped everything to save lives.
In the year since, Temple has attended vigils and visited the downtown intersection where the shooting occurred. He saw the memorials honoring murdered victims, some of whom he had cared for.
The community’s bond helped him recover quickly, he said. He’s excited to see Highland Park move forward, as long as the bigger lessons aren’t lost.
“We should never forget what happens,” Temple said. “We need to continue to be advocates for peace and safety and caring about each other. But we do have to move past, sometimes, the tragedy.”
