Father of Accused Gunman Goes on Trial in Illinois Parade Shooting

In a case that could broaden the legal interpretation of who bears responsibility for a mass shooting, the father of the man accused of killing seven people at a Fourth of July parade in suburban Chicago will stand trial on Monday for reckless conduct.

Prosecutors in Illinois have charged Robert Crimo Jr., the father of the accused shooter, Robert Crimo III, with seven felony counts for helping his son obtain a license to buy firearms before the shootings.

The elder Mr. Crimo, prosecutors said, ignored obvious signs that his son was capable of violence: In 2019, months before the gun license was acquired, a family member contacted the authorities, reporting that the younger Mr. Crimo had threatened to “kill everyone.” Police officers removed 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from the home but decided that there was not probable cause to arrest him at that time.

Robert Crimo III later bought several weapons, including a high-powered rifle. On July 4, 2022, he climbed onto the roof of a building in downtown Highland Park, Ill., and opened fire on the parade crowd, killing seven people and wounding many others, the authorities said. He was 21 at the time and remains in jail, awaiting a trial date.

The trial of Robert Crimo Jr. will be held in the Lake County courthouse in suburban Chicago. He opted for a bench trial, meaning that no jury will hear the case.

The trial is expected to last for several days.

Who is Robert Crimo Jr.?

Mr. Crimo, who has appeared in court at pretrial hearings, was a familiar figure in Highland Park even before the shooting as an owner of a deli bearing his name and a onetime mayoral candidate in the town.

He has denied any wrongdoing related to the parade attack, saying that he had no signs that his son intended to commit any kind of violence.

“I had no — not an inkling, warning — that this was going to happen,” he said last year. “I am just shocked.”

In a statement, George M. Gomez, a lawyer for the elder Mr. Crimo, called the charges against his client “baseless and unprecedented.”

His son, who is known as Bobby, has pleaded not guilty to 117 criminal charges, including 21 counts of first-degree murder.

What makes Illinois’s gun laws different?

Illinois has some of the strictest gun restrictions in the country. It requires most firearms owners to obtain a gun license, called a firearm owner’s identification card, which is issued by the Illinois State Police.

In sponsoring his son’s FOID card, prosecutors said, Mr. Crimo acted recklessly.

“People bear responsibility when they recklessly endanger others,” Eric Rinehart, the top prosecutor in Lake County, said last year as he announced the charges, which can each carry a sentence of up to three years in prison.

“The government is not typically going to know more than a parent about what’s going on,” Mr. Rinehart said, “with an 18-, 19- or 20-year-old.”

How unusual are the charges against the father in this case?

Eric A. Johnson, professor of law at the University of Illinois, said that while charging a person with reckless conduct is routine, this set of circumstances is unusual.

“It’s a relatively novel — though I think defensible — theory of prosecution,” Mr. Johnson said.

While prosecutors are not changing the law or what it means to act recklessly, they are identifying new situations where they might apply it, he said.

The approach echoes a strategy taken in cases following at least two other mass shootings in recent years. When a 15-year-old in Michigan was accused of slaughtering four classmates in 2021, his parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter; they have pleaded not guilty and will stand trial in January. And after a 29-year-old man went on a killing spree at a Waffle House in Nashville in 2018, the man’s father, an Illinois resident, was convicted of illegally providing the gun used at the restaurant.