WFCN – Robert Crimo III, the accused mass murderer, turned down a plea agreement on Wednesday that would have kept him behind bars for the rest of his life. Instead, he will face trial the next year.
Robert Crimo III, 23, allegedly shot and killed seven people and injured 48 others during a 2022 Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, and on Wednesday rejected a pre-arranged plea deal that would have sentenced him to life in prison. Image courtesy of the Highland Park, California, Police Department/UPI
Crimo, 23, arrived at the Lake County Courthouse in Waukegan, Illinois, on Wednesday morning. He was wheeled into the courtroom by deputies.
Previously, the prosecution claimed to have worked out a plea agreement with Crimo, according to which he would admit guilt to seven counts of murder and 48 counts of aggravated violence in return for a life sentence and the dismissal of all other accusations.
Image – ABC News
However, Crimo said nothing when 19th Judicial Court Judge Victoria Rossetti questioned him about whether he had accepted the plea agreement.
After asking for a quick break to talk with Crimo, Crimo’s lawyers exited the courtroom with him.
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Rosetti asked Crimo again if he had accepted the plea offer once Crimo and his lawyers had arrived.
“No,” Crimo replied.
The hearing was then concluded by Rossetti, who set a date for Crimo’s criminal trial to start on February 25.
The victims’ families told CNN that Crimo is “playing games” with the court and implied that he never planned to honor the plea agreement.
“He is evil and manipulative and brought us here today probably knowing what he was going to do,” stated Leah Sundheim.
The way Crimo acted in court demonstrated that he was carrying out his “reign of terror,” his lawyer Antonio Romanucci told CNN.
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“This was a calculated effort on his part to continue the suffering that our clients are going through,” Romanucci stated.
The lawyer is defending a number of the families in civil lawsuits related to the mass shooting.
Crimo is charged with seven counts of shooting and murdering and forty-eight counts of wounding or injuring during the July 4, 2022, attack on a parade in Highland Park, Illinois.
He faces 117 felony counts total, three of which are for first-degree murder for each of the seven victims he is alleged to have shot and killed.
Crimo is charged with disguising himself as a woman, using makeup to cover up his facial and neck tattoos, and sitting on a roof with a view of Highland Park’s Independence Day parade route.
Prosecutors claim that after firing a military-style weapon into the parade crowd and firing more than seventy rounds, Crimo left the roof and mixed in with the crowd as they fled the scene of the shooting.
Later that day, after a car chase near Lake Forest, he was apprehended by the police.
He admitted to carrying out the attack, according to the prosecution, and he loaded a third magazine after using two.
Katherine Goldstein, 64; Kevin McCarthy, 37; Irina McCarthy, 35; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63; Stephen Straus, 88; Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78; and Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, were the seven individuals that died on that day.
An 8-year-old boy who was shot in the back became paraplegic.
2011 saw the state of Illinois abolish the death penalty.
Robert Crimo Jr., the father of Crimo, entered a guilty plea to seven misdemeanor counts of reckless conduct in November and was given a sentence that included two years of probation, sixty days in jail, and one hundred hours of community service.
He was charged because he signed his son’s ID card as a handgun owner. As part of his plea agreement, he consented to testify against his son.