HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. — Days after a gunman opened fire at a Fourth of July parade here, Alberto Fuentes arrived at the memorial to the victims downtown, asking himself a question that now haunts many in this broken Chicago suburb: Could the 21-year- did the old suspect’s parents prevent any of this?
“The kid had a problem,” Fuentes, 40, said. “I have children too, and if I see something, I am responsible. Parents had a responsibility to do something.
Millions of American parents now worry that their children will become victims of a mass shooting. But a different nightmare exists for the small but growing group of parents whose children, almost always sons, pull the trigger.
Some had spent months or years before the attacks worrying about their sons’ mental health and seeking help in vain. But most don’t warn authorities before an attack, researchers say, and those parents can face scorn and accusations that they ignored warning signs or even enabled attacks by allowing their sons to acquire deadly weapons.
After that, some parents change their names and leave town. Few tell their stories to prevent future attacks. Others try to disappear through their silence.
“It’s terrifying enough to think you could be a victim of random violence,” said Andrew Solomon, an author who interviewed parents of the gunmen who attacked Columbine High School and Sandy Hook Elementary School. “But to think that you might be called because you don’t know that your child did this is also a terrible fate.”
The parents of the man accused of shooting in Highland Park are under scrutiny after the attack that killed seven people and left many more injured. Law enforcement released records showing the father sponsored his son for a firearms license in 2019, despite incidents in which his son allegedly tried to kill himself with a machete and attracted police at his home because, police were told, he had threatened to “kill anyone.” The father said he had done nothing wrong and was shocked by what happened.
As more of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings are carried out by killers in their teens or early 20s, prosecutors and researchers are focusing on parents to uncover how their sons are radicalized, what interventions might be stopped them and whether parents who ignore obvious warnings or provide guns to their children should be held criminally liable. According to the Violence Project, more than 50 people under the age of 25 have killed at least four people in a public place since 1966. These figures exclude mass killings attributed to gang activity, robberies or other major crimes.
Sometimes parents are charged with negligence or manslaughter after a child accidentally shoots themselves or someone else with an improperly stored gun. It is far less common for parents to be charged after their children commit a shooting.
More on the Highland Park shooting
Seven people were killed and many more injured in a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago.
But several recent cases suggest that could be changing as law enforcement agencies look for new ways to combat the rise in mass shootings.
“It’s kind of uncharted territory in terms of how much responsibility parents will have for their children’s behavior,” said Frank Kaminski, police chief in Park Ridge, Illinois, another Chicago suburb. He added, “I’m all for gun ownership.”
When a 15-year-old in Michigan was accused of slaughtering four classmates last year, his parents were charged with manslaughter; they pleaded not guilty. And after a 29-year-old man went on a killing spree at a Nashville Waffle House in 2018, the man’s father, an Illinois resident, was charged in that state with illegally providing the weapon used at the restaurant.
Officials said the Waffle House shooter was treated for mental health issues and later lost his Illinois gun permit. When that happened, they said, he turned the guns over to his father. When the son walked away, authorities said, the father returned a shotgun, which they said was a felony.
But Michael Dube, an attorney for Jeffrey Reinking, the father of the Waffle House shooter, said a distinction must be made between the responsibilities of the parents of a juvenile delinquent and the parents of someone who commits a mass shooting as a legal adult. Mr. Reinking was convicted of illegal supply of a firearm and is awaiting sentencing.
“When people are over the age of 18, they are beyond the control of their parents,” Mr Dube said.
Kevin Johnson, the prosecutor in the case, said family members and friends should “have the courage and common sense to follow through and make the appropriate report to the authorities” if they fear someone they know is turning to violence.
He added: “Unless and until they are willing to do that, there is no way the authorities can step in and help and maybe prevent a tragedy.”
Researchers say some parents of troubled children don’t always know where to turn for help. They hesitate to call the police about their sons’ personal mental health issues before they become violent, for fear of the lasting effect on their child’s record.
Investigators have found deep denial in a case like the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in 2012. A detailed state report found that the mother of the 20-year-old shooter had not heeded calls from medical experts to get him mental health treatment in the years before the shooting and had not restricted his access to weapons as his mental state deteriorated. The mother, Nancy Lanza, was one of 27 people killed by her son.
The issue of parental responsibility is particularly complex for armed men, who occupy a nebulous space between childhood and adulthood. They are often still housebound, but are of legal age and are often able to pass background checks and purchase high-powered firearms.
In online messages that appear to have been written by the 18-year-old accused of killing 10 people in a racist massacre at a Buffalo supermarket in May, the writer worried his mother would find the weapons he had hidden in a bedroom at his parents’ house . That same month, the Uvalde, Texas, shooter, also 18, was living with his grandparents and shot his grandmother in the face before driving to an elementary school where he killed 19 children and two adults.
The suspect in the Highland Park massacre, Robert E. Crimo III, had lived with his father, Robert Crimo Jr., for the past six months and his mother, Denise Pessina, before that, a family attorney said. After the attack, police said, he fled the city in his mother’s car before being arrested. He was charged with murder and held without bail.
Neither parent of the accused shooter has been charged with a crime. Authorities were noncommittal about whether they were investigating the elder Mr. Crimo, saying “everything is on the table.” A public defender representing the son declined to comment on the case against his client or whether the parents were at fault. George Gomez, a lawyer representing the elder Mr. Crimo and Ms. Pessina, said they declined to be interviewed for this article.
In recent media interviews, the elder Mr. Crimo said he was not involved in the shooting and had no idea what his son might have been up to.
He defended his decision to sponsor his son’s application for a gun owner’s license in 2019, saying he was following the legal process set up by Illinois for anyone under 21 to obtain a firearms owner’s identification card. Given the father’s sponsorship, state police said they had no legal basis to deny the son’s application.
“I filled out the consent form to allow my son to go through the process — they do background checks, whatever that entails,” Mr. Crimo said in an interview with ABC News.
The State Police said the document the elder Mr. Crimo signed included a provision that he was “responsible for any damages resulting from the use of firearms or ammunition by the minor applicant.”
The younger Mr Crimo bought the high-powered rifle that police said he used in the parade attack before his 21st birthday, when he would have been able to apply for a license without sponsorship. He was 21 at the time of the shooting, which police say he carried out after climbing onto a rooftop in downtown Highland Park during the parade and firing more than 80 bullets into the crowd.
Before the attack, the father was well-known in the community, running a delicatessen in the town and running unsuccessfully for mayor. His wife, Mrs. Pessina, ran a natural healing business.
Home life for the Crimo family can be chaotic. In August 2002, just before the suspect’s second birthday, police officers found the toddler alone in a car in a Toys “R” Us parking lot. Prosecutors blamed his mother, Ms. Pessina, who they said left him alone for about 27 minutes with the windows down while it was 79 degrees outside. Court records show Ms. Pessina reached a plea deal and spent a year on court supervision, which she completed. No conviction has been entered in the child abuse case, records show.
The suspect’s parents sometimes argued loudly, and officers made several visits to the home during a tumultuous period about a decade ago to intervene in petty disputes, police records show.
There were signs along the way that their son was struggling. He dropped out of Highland Park High School in 2016, shortly before the start of his sophomore year, officials said, and never graduated from that school.
“It was like he was invisible,” said Kate Kramer, 21, who knew him in high school.
About 80 percent of gunmen in mass shootings show significant change…
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