Highland Park Parade Shooting Trial Set To Begin Monday; Here's What To Expect

The trial of the Highland Park parade shooting suspect is set to kick off Monday with jury selection at a courthouse in north suburban Chicago.

The trial, which could span four to six weeks, might be the public’s first look at the mountain of evidence prosecutors say they have against Robert Crimo III.

The Lake County state’s attorney’s office, led by Eric Rinehart, alleges Crimo killed seven people and wounded 48 on July 4, 2022, while shooting from a rooftop overlooking Highland Park’s annual parade.

Police arrested him hours after the massacre while he was driving his family’s car in the north suburbs. He was charged with 117 felony counts.

Rinehart’s office disclosed last month that much of the trial may focus on the testimony of the dozens of living victims. The majority of those victims plan to testify about their experiences of the attack.

But in a case with such an unpredictable defendant, no one knows for sure what to expect — including whether Crimo may testify.

The defendant has acted erratically as the case has trudged along for two years in court before Lake County Judge Victoria Rossetti.

Prosecutors have said the defendant confessed in a police interview the evening after the attack. But Crimo later claimed in a video call leaked from jail that the attack was staged by FBI agents.

Crimo then dismissed his court-appointed lawyers in late 2023 and demanded a speedy trial. But weeks before the trial was set to begin a year ago, he reversed course and reinstated his attorneys, who pushed back the trial date.

Then early in 2024, Crimo said he was prepared to change his plea to guilty. But in a dramatic courtroom scene, Crimo said he would not change his plea after all — angering survivors who said it was Crimo’s way of hurting them all over again.

Despite that unpredictability, Rinehart says prosecutors are prepared to lay out evidence they’ve collected to pin Crimo as the shooter who climbed to a rooftop and fired more than 80 rounds from an assault rifle.

Prosecutors have said they have thousands of pages of evidence in the case, including videos and other documents. That includes a 7 1/2-hour video of Crimo’s police interrogation in which prosecutors say Crimo admits to the attack.

Prosecutors plan to identify Crimo as the shooter through video surveillance allegedly showing him going to and from the rooftop. A former school resource officer who interacted with Crimo will identify him in the videos, prosecutors said.

Evidence also ties Crimo to the firearms, including one dropped near the scene of the shooting, prosecutors have said.

Crimo’s assistant public defenders, Gregory Ticsay and Anton Trizna, have not indicated how they will defend the 24-year-old at trial. The lawyers have not proclaimed Crimo innocent in any court hearing.

Highland Park residents gather in Port Clinton Square on July 11, 2022 for a 2-minute moment of silence for the victims of the shooting the week before.

But the lawyers did try to prohibit hours of Crimo’s interrogation video from the trial, arguing late last year that police improperly kept Crimo from accessing a family attorney. Rossetti ruled against the request.

The judge has also warned Crimo several times that the trial would proceed with or without him after he skipped multiple court hearings last year.

State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart, a Democrat who won his first reelection bid last year, has appeared at many of Crimo’s pretrial hearings — and spoken at many of them — but has not said if he will prosecute part of the case. Much of the work so far have been handled by two of Rinehart’s assistant state’s attorneys, Ben Dillon and Jeffrey Facklam.

Prosecutors were prepared to lay out much of the same evidence for another trial in late 2023, that of the suspect’s father, Robert Crimo Jr.

His father was set to go to trial on charges that he recklessly signed his son’s firearm permit application when he was too young. But on the day the trial was set to begin, the father accepted a deal with prosecutors. Crimo Jr. pleaded guilty and served two months in jail.

At the time, Crimo Jr.’s lawyer said the father was foregoing a trial to spare the Highland Park community from reliving the trauma of the shooting. He also said he was doing it to keep evidence from being publicized ahead of his son’s trial.

Holding a trial “would mean that the potential key evidence would be disclosed to the public, jeopardizing his son’s fair right to a trial,” attorney George Gomez told reporters then.