By Travis Caldwell, Kelly McCleary, Aditi Sangal, Adrienne Vogt, Maureen Chowdhury, Elise Hammond and Melissa Macaya, CNN
From CNN’s Joe Sutton
A seventh victim has died from Monday’s fatal mass shooting during a parade in Highland Park, Illinois, Mayor Nancy Rotering tells CNN.
According to an update from the NorthShore University Health System, a total of 39 people were received at four hospitals from the shooting yesterday.
From CNN's Eric Levenson in Highland Park, Illinois
Maggie Schmieder, 40, was sitting with her family and friends in front of the Dairy Queen in Highland Park, Illinois, along the parade route and described the moments after the shooting more as “chaotic calm” than terror or panic.
“People weren’t like sprinting or diving down,” she said. “It was like there was this confusion, but people automatically started going.”
She and her family fled the area and eventually made their way to their car before driving away from the scene safely.
Schmieder works as a teacher and said she has prepared for a mass shooting at her school.
“I always feared that this could happen at work. I naively, truly never thought that it would happen here, and certainly not at a crowded public event with a celebration,” she said.
She told CNN that she moved to Highland Park eight years ago, a year after the city’s 2013 move to ban assault rifles, a push that played into her decision to relocate.
“One of the reasons we sought out Highland Park and chose to live here was due to some of those strict ideas about gun laws, safety, a relatively liberal, forward-thinking, educated community that we felt safe raising our children in,” she said. “I think now the takeaway here is that, while everything that could have been done possibly in terms of those laws, and police presence that was there, and preparedness, and it still wasn’t preventable. It still wasn’t stopped.”
She agreed with Highland Park’s mayor saying that the patchwork of gun laws makes restrictions difficult on a local level.
“Our laws tried to protect the citizens and reflect our values here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t cross county lines, cross-town lines, cross state lines and bring these weapons back in,” she said.
CNN’s Raja Razek
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, along with Democratic Rep. Robin Kelly and other leaders, reacted to the shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, as they discussed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act at Aunt Martha's Southeast Chicago Community Health Center.
At least six people were killed in the shooting during a 4th of July parade, and dozens have been injured, officials said. The shooting suspect, who has not been charged, was taken into custody Monday evening. He used a "high-powered rifle" in the attack, police said.
President Biden in June signed into law the first major federal gun safety legislation passed in decades, marking a significant bipartisan breakthrough on one of the most contentious policy issues in Washington. The legislation came together in the aftermath of recent mass shootings at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school and a Buffalo, New York, supermarket that was in a predominantly Black neighborhood.
"This bill places tougher penalties like gun trafficking and straw purchasing. Two of the things that plague us most in Chicago," Lightfoot said. "With this legislation, straw purchasing is now a federal crime, a critically important step. Gun trafficking is now a freestanding offense for the first time in federal law."
"This act also closes what is known as the boyfriend loophole by broadening limits on firearm purchases by people who have abused romantic and intimate partners," she added.
Rep. Kelly also spoke about the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and "why we have to keep working.
"Just yesterday in Highland Park, we lost six people to gun violence," she said. "People were there just to enjoy their Independence Day weekend." The lawmaker added the suspect "tore their worlds apart with a gun."
According to Kelly, an important aspect of the bill for Chicago is the community violence intervention.
"We can pass all the laws that we want, but if we don't invest in our young people, we don't invest in our neighborhood, if we don't invest in our communities, those gun laws are not going to mean a whole lot," she said. "This new law includes a direct $250 million investment in community violence, intervention, funding and investments into many of the programs to curb violence."
From CNN’s Ashley Killough and Rebekah Riess
A total of 39 people were received at four hospitals from the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, yesterday, according to an update from Jim Anthony, senior director of public relations at NorthShore University Health System.
They were either transported to the hospital or drove themselves to the hospital, according to Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli, a spokesperson for the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. They were injured by gunfire, he said.
The patients were received at hospitals in Highland Park, Evanston, Skokie and Glenbrook, Anthony said.
Anthony said nine patients now remain hospitalized in their health system, and their ages range from 14 to 70s. Four patients are in good condition; another four are in stable condition; and one patient, a 69-year old man, is in critical condition with a gunshot wound at Evanston Hospital, Anthony told CNN.
Eight of the nine current patients suffered gunshot wounds, according to Anthony.
Of the 39 total patients, 28 patients have been treated and discharged, Anthony said.
An 8-year-old boy was transported to University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital, and one patient died yesterday while receiving critical care in the Highland Park Hospital Emergency Department, he said.
From CNN’s Eric Levenson in Highland Park, Illinois
Barbara Medina, 46, was injured in the shooting — not by gunfire, but by the stampede.
She was marching in the parade holding the banner for Community Partners for Affordable Housing (CPAH) when she heard gunshots ring out. A sea of people rushed toward her, so she dropped the banner, grabbed her 7-year-old daughter, Caroline, and her scooter and ran. She got split up from her 12-year-old son and her father in the chaos.
Medina fled down an alley and noticed her daughter slowing down behind her. She reached back to grab her daughter and help her along, but tripped on her scooter and fell hard on her left arm. She knew immediately it was broken.
“I could see it went the wrong way, and I had to kind of maneuver it back. It was very painful,” she said.
After making it to a stranger’s home, she learned that her son and father were safe and sheltering elsewhere. She borrowed a sling and an ice pack and propped her arm up on some pillows to relieve the pain. Hours later, she went to Skokie Hospital, a non-trauma hospital, to get her arm set, and doctors diagnosed her with a broken proximal radius just below the elbow. She now has a cast from the tips of her fingers to the top of her shoulder and expects to be in a cast for about six to eight weeks.
Her arm is sore but she said she was thankful she and her family weren’t seriously injured.
“I’m more worried for the kids. I’m just grateful that we’re all safe,” she said. “It’ll be a long healing process.”
From CNN's Ali Zaslav
In the wake of the mass shooting at the July 4 parade in Highland Park, Illinois, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell did not explicitly say Congress should do more to address gun violence, instead saying that the recently passed bipartisan gun legislation has “targeted the problem,” which he said is mental health.
“I think yesterday’s shooting is another example of what the problem is. The problem is mental health and these young men who seem to be inspired to commit these atrocities. So, I think the bill that we passed targeted the problem. In that particular instance, it was school safety and mental health," McConnell said.
"We have got to figure out some way to identify these troubled young men, and it’s very complicated because after every one of these shootings there are people that say, ‘Oh, I thought he was pretty strange, I wish I’d notified somebody about it.’ One of the things we did in our bill, although the shooter yesterday was [21], we did open up the juvenile records to do background checks and hopefully that will help us do a better job of identifying people who have these mental problems before they carry out these awful atrocities,” he added
More context: Studies show, however, that people with severe mental illnesses are more than 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population and only about 3% to 5% of violent acts can be attributed to serious mental illness, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
In his prepared remarks at the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce Public Policy Luncheon in Paducah, Kentucky, on Tuesday, McConnell generally referenced recent shootings and the new bipartisan gun legislation, but didn’t specifically speak to the shooting in Highland Park.
“Recently, in the wake of all of these shootings, I joined both sides in the Senate in passing a bill related to school safety and mental illness,” he said in a speech, “while at the same time not infringing upon anybody's Second Amendment rights.”
He did address the Illinois parade shooting when asked by a reporter after his speech.
From CNN's Elise Hammond
Dr. Wendy Binstock Rush, an anesthesiologist who was at the Fourth of July parade where the shooting unfolded, said several people with medical training tried to help those who were shot during the event in Highland Park, Illinois.
A suspected gunman killed six people and injured dozens of others when he opened fire into the parade crowd from the roof of a building. Police say the suspected shooter used a "high-powered rifle" to fire more than 70 rounds on Monday.
Binstock Rush said she was waiting for her family to arrive at the parade when the shooting began. She said it seemed like the gunfire was close to where she was standing.
"Anybody who had, you know, any medical background from first aid to physicians all jumped into action to do whatever they could to help the situation," she told CNN on Tuesday.
When the gunfire stopped, she identified herself as an anesthesiologist physician and was led to what she says was the "most critical person at the time" — a man who was "profusely bleeding" from his abdomen, she said.
"CPR was in progress. People were holding pressure on an abdominal wound that he was profusely bleeding from," she said, adding that they continued CPR and started IV fluids to try to offset the blood he was losing.
Eventually, paramedics showed up and put the man in an ambulance.
"We took him into the hospital, and we spent about another 20 to 30 minutes working on him, but unfortunately, he had lost way too much blood and his injuries were too severe and he did perish at the hospital," she said.
From CNN's Eric Levenson in Highland Park, Illinois
Some residents of Highland Park, Illinois, told CNN that they recognized shooting suspect Robert E. Crimo III, after police released photos of him due to his distinctive appearance, stating that they had seen him recently around the area.
Eric Januszewski and Kate McCarney live just a block away from the shooting scene and came out Tuesday morning with their rescue dog Biff to see the crime scene. A day earlier, Januszewski was at his home during the parade, heard the gunshots and saw the stampede of people fleeing. He offered waters and sodas to police in the hours afterward as they baked in the sun.
Both recognized the suspect, Crimo, from previous run-ins, primarily due to his colorful hair and prominent face tattoos. At a recent carnival in Highwood, Januszewski said he commented to Crimo about the face tattoos, noting they were “quite a commitment.” Crimo agreed and then told Januszewski to check out his SoundCloud account, he said.
Other residents who were at the Fourth of July parade reflected on the chaotic scene that ensued once the shooting started.
Ellen Cohen and Rob Phillips attended the parade and set up their chairs near its start, a block away from Central Avenue, where the shooting ultimately took place. They wanted to avoid the crowds.
They snapped a selfie of themselves smiling and enjoyed watching a group of kids bike through the parade route just minutes prior to the start of the official parade. About 10-15 minutes after the parade began, they heard what they thought was fireworks and ultimately realized were gunshots and ran from the area. Ellen left behind her cell phone and returned hours later to retrieve it.
For two residents, a last minute decision to skip the parade left them wondering what would have happened if they hadn't change their mind.
Anisah and Steve Mihaljevic live on Central Avenue and Linden Avenue, just a block from the parade route. They were in Skokie, Illinois, visiting her parents on Monday morning and considered coming home for the parade after an invite from some friends. But they decided not to, partly out of laziness — a decision that left them wondering, “What if?”
“It was just so random that we ended up not being here,” Anisah told CNN, sitting on a bench near the crime scene. “It was one of those random decisions that ends up changing your life.”
They noted that last month, on June 11, there was a March For Our Lives rally in downtown Highland Park and at Sunset Park, where the parade ends. Their daughters attended and held signs calling for change.
From CNN's Eric Levenson in Highland Park, Illinois
The FBI is combing the area of the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, for evidence.
On the morning after Monday's shooting, three blocks of Central Avenue in downtown Highland Park remain blocked off behind police lines.
FBI agents today have been inspecting belongings left behind by people attending the July 4 parade in the city yesterday, including folding chairs, blankets and a child’s car stroller.
The suspected shooter killed at least six people and injured dozens of others on Monday. The suspect, who was taken into custody later Monday, climbed onto a rooftop of a business and opened fire on the parade about 20 minutes after it started.
Bystanders said they initially thought the sound of gunfire was fireworks.
The area is a wealthy suburb through and through. On the east end of the police tape is a Metra train crossing and St. John’s Avenue; the four corners are a Veterans Memorial to Highland Park soldiers, a parking lot, a salon, and a bank. On the west end of the police tape is Green Bay Road; on its corners are a gas station and an Anthropologie store.
