‘Heavy and heartbreaking’: Highland Park survivors testify as sentencing begins

The life sentence awaiting the 24-year-old Highwood man who fatally shot seven spectators at Highland Park’s Independence Day parade in 2022 is not in doubt. Illinois law mandates he spend the rest of his life in prison after pleading guilty last month.

But before Lake County Judge Victoria Rossetti pronounces sentence, victims’ family members and survivors of the July 4, 2022 attack were set Wednesday to confront the killer who took so much from so many.

He denied them that opportunity. Robert E. Crimo III, who has been incarcerated in the Lake County jail since his arrest hours after the murders, did not show up for the first day of his sentencing hearing.

His absence, however, did not take away from the heart-wrenching testimony of his victims’ family members and survivors of the mass shooting.

In a statement read by his daughter, the widower of victim Jacquelyn “Jacki” Sundheim described the pain of his wife’s loss as “fresh, visceral and sometimes too much to bear.”

Bruce Sundheim also berated the absent murderer for his “wanton cruelty” and wished him “a life filled with torment, pain and regret.”

“All the plans, hopes and dreams we built together were destroyed by your violent tantrum,” he wrote in the statement read by Leah Sundheim.

Jacki Sundheim was the kind of good that counteracts the evil represented by the killer’s crimes, said Leah Sundheim, who concluded her statement saying “I will do my best to pour as much good as I can back into the world.”

Sundheim, 63, along with fellow Highland Park residents Katherine Goldstein, 64, Stephen Straus, 88, Kevin McCarthy, 37, and his wife Irina McCarthy, 35, were killed in the shooting. Also fatally shot were Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78, of Morelos, Mexico, and Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, of Waukegan.

The 24-year-old shooter admitted March 3 to 21 counts of first-degree murder and 48 counts of attempted first-degree murder. Authorities say he perched atop a roof along the parade route and firing a military-style, semiautomatic rifle into the crowd below a little after 10 a.m. on July 4, 2022, killing seven people and wounding 48.

While some expressed anger, Angel Toledo, son of Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, channeled grace and offered forgiveness.

“I forgive you,” he wrote in a statement read by Assistant Lake County State’s Attorney Ben Dillon. “It’s not been easy to reach this place of forgiveness. But Jesus teaches us the power of forgiveness. Through Him I have found the strength.”

“I pray you will open your heart to Him and find your peace,” he added.

Liz Turnipseed, one of several injured survivors who spoke Wednesday, made clear her reality.

“I am in pain every single day from the bullet that tore through my pelvis and leg,” she said, echoing others who described in wrenching detail the physical and emotional trauma they still endure.

The pain resulting from nerve and tissue damage impacts her ability to walk, sit or stand for extended periods. It also affects her ability to play with and care for her daughter, who was three at the time of the shooting, Turnipseed said.

But the greatest loss is that of a larger family she and husband Ian were planning. Doctors told Turnipseed it would be unsafe for her to carry another pregnancy, dashing their dreams of giving their daughter a sibling.

“That loss is just so heavy and heartbreaking,” she said through tears.

The sentencing hearing, which will likely stretch over several days, began with video taken by spectators that showed the Highland Park High School marching band playing “You’re a Grand Old Flag” as it marched in the downtown parade.

As shots rang out, the video shows panicked spectators “running, yelling, screaming for help,” said retired Highland Park police Cmdr. Gerald Cameron, one of seven witnesses who laid the foundation for the emotional victim impact statements that followed.

Cameron, who drove several victims to the hospital that day, described some as not breathing and covered in blood.

Dana Ruder Ring, who attended the parade with her husband and three children, described her family diving into a group of people sheltering behind a brick pillar then making their way to an underground garage nearby.

It was there that Ring encountered a shaken woman carrying a toddler covered in blood and wearing one shoe.

She said, “the blood’s not ours. He’s not mine,” recalled Ring, whose husband took the boy in his arms and went to find his parents. Unable to locate them, the couple took him to Ring’s parent’s home, where he told them: “Mom and dad are coming to find me soon.”

That boy was Aiden McCarthy, the child of Irina and her husband Kevin who died shielding his son on that tragic day.