Six murdered, dozens wounded by sniper at July Fourth parade in Highland Park, Illinois

At least six peo­ple were killed and more than two dozen were hos­pi­tal­ized by a sniper with a high-pow­ered rifle on the rooftop of a build­ing along a parade route in down­town High­land Park, Illi­nois, a lake­side sub­urb north of Chicago.

Among the casu­al­ties were between four and five children.

As they fled the parade route on Cen­tral Street in down­town High­land Park, pan­icked parade-goers left behind chairs, baby strollers and blan­kets as they sought cov­er, not know­ing just what hap­pened. Even as peo­ple ran, a klezmer band, seem­ing­ly unaware of the gun­fire, con­tin­ued to play.

The High­land Park police con­sid­er the area to be an active crime scene and have asked local res­i­dents to shel­ter in place, though the area of con­straint is slow­ly being reduced, and are still search­ing for a sus­pect. Evi­dence poten­tial­ly lead­ing to which spe­cif­ic firearm was used has been recovered.

High­land Park police com­man­der Chris O’Neill called on busi­ness own­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic to turn over secu­ri­ty footage that might help them find the shoot­er. A Per­son of Inter­est, a twen­ty-two year old male by the name of Robert Crimo, is being sought regard­ing the shooting.

The Lake Coun­ty Major Crime Task Force, High­land Park police and the FBI are lead­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion, but “there are dozens of police agen­cies on the scene and our fed­er­al part­ners are deployed as well,” accord­ing to High­land Park police.

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden com­ment­ed on the hor­rif­ic shoot­ing Mon­day after­noon and said after speak­ing with Gov­er­nor Pritzk­er that he had offered the full sup­port of the fed­er­al government.

A num­ber of towns and sub­urbs with­in the Chica­go area have can­celed their fire­works and relat­ed July 4th events in response to the mass shoot­ing Mon­day at the parade in High­land Park.

A fire­works cel­e­bra­tion planned as part of this evening’s Major League Base­ball game between the Chica­go White Sox and the  Min­neso­ta Twins has been can­celed, and a moment of silence will be observed before the start of the game.

This sit­u­a­tion is cur­rent­ly very flu­id and cir­cum­stances will change. For­tu­nate­ly, approx­i­mate­ly nine­teen of the injured have report­ed­ly been treat­ed and released.