Highland Park parade shooting prosecutor says he expects additional charges to be filed
Attorney for Robert Crimo III's parents say father did nothing wrong by helping son obtain FOID card
CHICAGO (WLS) -- A week after the deadly Highland Park parade shooting, the celebration of America that became a perilous fight for survival is now a search for justice.
The rights being celebrated on July 4th are now being afforded to the 21-year-old charged in the mass shooting and questions are being asked about whether his parents should be legally liable for anything their son did.
The public official who will prosecute the alleged shooter, Robert Crimo III, said this is far from being a closed case.
RELATED: Police say previous contact with Crimo family included 'clear and present danger' concerns
"We're analyzing social media, we're analyzing emails, we're analyzing text messages," Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart said. "We have to understand the shooter's movements and planning in the days and weeks before the attack, and after the attack. So you have to figure out where he was moving, who he was talking to, what he was doing."
In an I-Team interview, Rinehart said 83 shots were fired in Highland Park, all by Crimo III. He allegedly used one AR-style rifle reloaded twice with extended magazines that Rinehart believes should be banned.
WATCH | Interview with Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart
The state's attorney said he expects additional charges, possibly against additional people. Crimo's parents are among those still being looked at for what they may have known and when.
RELATED: Illinois red flag gun laws: How the Highland Park parade shooter slipped through the cracks
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Chuck Goudie asked him, "Do you know as you sit there now and can you say whether the father knew about the plans for the attack?"
"Yeah, I don't want... I don't want to comment on that right now," Rinehart said.
Former Chicago federal prosecutor and ABC7 legal analyst Gil Soffer said he sees differences between what happened in Highland Park a week ago and the mass murder case in Michigan last November, when a 15-year-old student allegedly killed four people and wounded seven others. His parents are facing involuntary manslaughter charges for failing to secure the gun.
"In Michigan, the parents -first the law that they were charged under criminalized gross negligence --so if they were grossly negligent for having provided their son, a gun, they could be criminally exposed. In Illinois, it's a higher threshold for involuntary manslaughter. There has to be recklessness. And secondly, in the Michigan case, the son was a minor and when he pulled the trigger he was a minor," said Soffer.
George Gomez, an attorney for Crimo's parents, said the father did nothing wrong by helping his son obtain a state gun card.
"We're confident that they're not going to be facing any charges," Gomez said.
Rinehart told the I-Team that authorities are working backwards and forwards from what he called a "calculated and planned attack" in Highland Park. The reason others could be charged is because he said they have to determine what Crimo III was doing in the weeks before the attack and right after it, and who he was talking to.
