Robert Crimo Jr.’s upcoming trial on charges of reckless conduct is an unusual case, according to experts, prosecutors and defense attorneys.
Only on a few occasions have parents faced prosecution for their child’s actions in a long and bloody history of mass shootings committed by young adult men in America.
Crimo Jr.’s Lake County Court trial is scheduled to start Monday.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/Z3QFRVU3BAGHHUII3DNPGI3VXE.jpg)
Prosecutors argue Crimo Jr. took a “reckless and unjustified risk” in sponsoring his son’s Firearms Ownership Identification Card (FOID) application, and should have known his son was troubled, making him a poor candidate for gun ownership.
Crimo’s son, Robert Crimo III, then purchased firearms authorities say he used to spray over 70 rounds of ammunition into a crowded Central Avenue during the Highland Park Independence Day Parade last year.
The younger Crimo killed seven people and injured dozens more on that July 4, according to police. He faces seven counts of murder and remains in custody. The elder Crimo remains free on bond.
Crimo Jr. faces charges of reckless conduct, a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison. When the conduct causes bodily harm to — or endangers the safety of — another person, it can be charged as a felony, punishable by 1 to 3 years in prison.
[ Alleged Highland Park parade shooter will not testify in father’s trial ]
Gun-violence experts said this type of charge is unprecedented, but that no other situation of mass violence has presented this kind of culpability.
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine professor Lori Ann Post, who has studied decades of mass-shooting events, said Crimo III displayed nearly every warning sign of a dangerous person, and a reasonable parent would have held the son accountable, instead of signing a gun license application.
“Bravo to the prosecutor for going after the father, because in this case the father participated in not only making him a mass shooter, but the father was complicit in arming him,” Post said.
Post likened the situation to a car accident caused by someone leaving a house party where alcohol was served.
“People have been charged for negligence in that too, and this is way more profound,” she said.
Crimo signed state forms in December of 2019 for his then-underage son’s application to purchase firearms, authorities said.
The document the elder Crimo signed for his son’s firearm application included a provision that said he, “shall be liable for any damages resulting from the minor applicant’s use of firearms or firearm ammunition.”
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/23OHQ7PUK5FLDBSXRJ6QB5ZNIE.jpg)
Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois Rifle Association, said it’s the parent’s responsibility to evaluate if their minor child should own a gun before signing the FOID application, and to understand the liability associated with the affidavit.
“We support the idea that there are some people who shouldn’t have firearms,” Pearson said. “It’s a parent’s duty to straighten that out (for their minor children).”
Earlier in 2019, Highland Park police were called to the Crimo home twice — once when the younger Crimo was threatening to kill himself with a machete, and a second time when he was threatening to harm others, authorities said.
[ Purchase of rifle allegedly used in Highland Park massacre highlights limits of Illinois gun laws ]
On the second occasion, the responding officers confiscated 16 knives, a dagger and sword from Crimo III’s possession. The elder Crimo later claimed the confiscated knives belonged to him.
The police did not have probable cause to make an arrest and no one signed a complaint against Crimo III, according to Sgt. Chris Covelli, spokesman for the Lake County Major Crime Task Force. But Highland Park police did notify Illinois State Police, the agency that issues Illinois gun permits, about the incident.
Pearson said there were many red flags in the case of Crimo III and, “plenty of culpability to go around.”
A parent’s responsibility
Since 2021, the Lake County state’s attorney’s office has filed more than 80 reckless conduct cases, but none of those cases involved parents sponsoring FOID applications for troubled teens, according to the office.
At least two of the cases involved adults who allowed children access to firearms, authorities said.
“The fact that no other charges have been filed similar to Mr. Crimo’s case only shows how rare, reckless and criminal Crimo’s actions were with respect to an assault weapon,” a representative of the state’s attorney’s office said in an email statement.
While attempts to reach Crimo Jr.’s defense attorney George Gomez were unsuccessful, Gomez previously stated the charges against the father hinge on legal questions, rather than facts, as to whether the action constitutes a crime.
“It’s a rare case with rare facts,” Gomez said in July.
It is not often the parents of mass shooters are held responsible for their children’s action. However, the parents of an alleged young mass shooter in Michigan are facing charges of involuntary manslaughter for a November 2021 shooting at Oxford High School.
Prosecutors argue James and Jennifer Crumbly should have anticipated the massacre, and intervened beforehand. The parents bought their son the gun used in the shooting, despite knowledge of mental health struggles. The morning of the shooting, the parents were called to the school over a troubling drawing, but did not bring him home.
Post, who’s studied the profiles of mass shooters, said many are not held accountable by their parents for their behavior prior to the event of mass violence.
As a sophomore, Crimo III dropped out of high school, which Post said is nearly universal among mass shooters.
“Sophomores are 16 years old. Fast forward, he’s 21 and he commits a mass killing, so all those years he was enabled and allowed to do nothing,” Post said.
A reasonably minded parent, she said, would set boundaries for their teen, hold them accountable and require them to go to school or work.
Additionally, Post said, many mass shooters suffer from parental neglect, or experience violence in the home, making the parents unqualified to notice the potential harm their child might cause.
“The apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” Post said. “They’re not good parents to start off with, so they’re not really in a good position to make a designation that this person is OK. Everything about (Crimo III) signaled ongoing, escalating anti-social behavior.”
Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research Daniel Webster said occasionally parents are charged with violating child-access-prevention laws, which require firearm owners to safely secure their firearms so they aren’t accessible to young people, but that Crimo Jr.’s charges are unprecedented.
“It’s sort of contributing very directly to the homicides, as opposed to just a negligence kind of thing with safe storage,” Webster said.
Afternoon Briefing
Weekdays
Chicago Tribune editors’ top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon.
A report from Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions found that Illinois is an “outlier” in allowing parents or guardians to sponsor children between the ages of 18 and 21 for gun ownership.
[ Report released 5 months after Highland Park shooting makes gun safety recommendations for Illinois ]
Those in that age group have high rates of both homicides and suicides, and engage in risky behavior that leads to accident gun injury as well, the report states.
Webster, who studied parental perspectives on firearms in the home, said generally parents are unaware, or in denial, that their adolescent child might be struggling with suicidal ideations and how firearms relate to their child’s survival.
He suspects there is even more denial that a child would commit a heinous act, like a mass shooting.
When it comes to gun-owning parents, Webster said they usually don’t think of guns as something that is risky.
“A lot of (gun owners’) mindset is that it’s not about guns. If someone wants to do something horrible, they’ll do something horrible,” Webster said. “There are just deep cultural differences in how people think about guns, and whether they are inherent dangers, even under remarkable circumstances.”
