Illinois prosecutors have announced murder charges against the accused perpetrator of a mass shooting at a July 4 parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park which left seven people dead and more than 30 injured in an attack that officials said had been planned “for several weeks”.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, Lake County Sheriff’s Department deputy chief Christopher Covelli told reporters the shooter had legally purchased the firearm used in the massacre somewhere in the Chicago region of Illinois.
Robert E Crimo III, a 21-year-old man who was detained as a “person of interest” on Monday evening after an eight-hour manhunt, was charged later on Tuesday with seven counts of first-degree murder by the Lake County state’s attorney’s office. Should he be convicted, he faces a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.