I was at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade. I saw the horror unfold.

I just wanted to go to this parade and enjoy the day. And then the shooting started.

Empty chairs, strollers, toys and bikes litter the sidewalks on Central Avenue the scene where 6 people were shot and killed and at least 2 dozen others were injured in a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park.
Empty chairs, strollers, toys and bikes litter the sidewalks on Central Avenue the scene where 6 people were shot and killed and at least 2 dozen others were injured in a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Chicago Sun-Times
Empty chairs, strollers, toys and bikes litter the sidewalks on Central Avenue the scene where 6 people were shot and killed and at least 2 dozen others were injured in a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park.
Empty chairs, strollers, toys and bikes litter the sidewalks on Central Avenue the scene where 6 people were shot and killed and at least 2 dozen others were injured in a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Chicago Sun-Times

I was at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade. I saw the horror unfold.

I just wanted to go to this parade and enjoy the day. And then the shooting started.

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Editor’s note, 7-6-2022: On the day of the mass shooting in Highland Park, the author of this first-person report – Chicago Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet – took photos of some of the dead with her personal mobile phone. We’ve decided to add one of the images to her story, with an explanation of the decision and, because the image is graphic, behind a click-to-view warning. Here’s the reasoning, from Jennifer Kho, the executive editor of the Sun-Times, which Chicago Public Media acquired in January 2022.

You know why I’m writing this.

I was at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade.

Not as the Sun-Times Washington bureau chief. As a civilian. I’m staying with my sister over this holiday. She lives in Highland Park, which is approximately 25 miles north of Chicago’s downtown. More than 30,000 people live there.

I just wanted to go to this parade and enjoy the day. Hang out with friends. Maybe after the parade, go to one of the stunning Lake Michigan beaches that hug this North Shore suburb. Or maybe have a swim at the Highland Park pool, next to the fire station. That fire station transformed into an emergency operations center after the unimaginable — is this a cliché? — happened.

In a matter of seconds, a sniper — using a high-powered, rapid-fire weapon — slaughtered six people and wounded dozens of others as the parade made its way down Central Avenue in downtown Highland Park.

The parade started about 10 a.m. I’m at the start of the route.

Leading off the parade were fire engines from Highland Park, sirens blaring in a good way — before the world changed in this suburban city at 10:14 a.m., when the sniper started shooting from a rooftop.

There was a color guard — four sailors, two with rifles on their shoulders. Soon after that, the Highland Park City Council marched, led by Mayor Nancy Rotering — who a few minutes after she passed me would be dealing with a massacre on what was supposed to be a day of celebration.

The blue-shirted members of the Highland Park High School band stepped off playing “It’s a Grand Old Flag.” Then the marchers from the League of Women Voters from Highland Park and Highwood.

It was all so delightfully normal.

Then it wasn’t.

I was watching and listening to the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band perform on top of a flatbed truck when I saw people running away from Central Avenue. “A shooter,” someone said. I saw terrified people run into an underground garage, looking for safety from the bullets.

As people were fleeing the scene, I hustled toward it. Please don’t make a big deal that I did it. I’m a reporter.

I saw, frozen in time, what people left when they fled. So many baby carriages. Folding chairs. Backpacks. Water bottles. Towels. Blankets. Police were asking people to leave the active shooting scene.

As I approached Port Clinton Square, by the reviewing stand, I saw a woman down. I don’t know if she was dead or alive. Two people were leaning over her. I saw another woman on the ground.

Then, near a bench in the square, I came upon a pool of blood, ruby red blood. There was so much blood, that the blood puddle was lumpy because so much already coagulated. The shape of the blood — was this a twisted Rorschach test? — looked like a handgun to me.

I’m going into this gruesome detail because this is what gun violence from a rapid-fire weapon with an apparent high capacity magazine looks like. My sister, Neesa, on Central near the railroad tracks, heard two sequences of rapid fire. The pause is likely when the shooter switched out magazines.

Highland Park parade-goers flee as gunshots ring out in this screenshot from a video captured by Chicago Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet on the morning of July 4, 2022.
Highland Park parade-goers flee as gunshots ring out in this screenshot from a video captured by Chicago Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet on the morning of July 4, 2022. Lynn Sweet / Chicago Sun-Times

I saw my first body of the day. A blanket covered the top of the man. His shorts were soaked with blood. His legs were bloody and blood was still flowing out of him. Two more bodies were on the steps leading into Port Clinton. Thankfully, someone threw blankets over their torsos.

Editor’s note: When Lynn Sweet, the Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, arrived on the scene of the Highland Park shooting moments after it had occurred, she took photos on her phone that included pictures of victims who had been shot to death. WBEZ with the Chicago Sun-Times editors spent hours — more than a day — considering whether or not to run them. In the end, we decided that the strong public interest in documenting one of the worst mass shootings in Illinois history, at a time when mass shootings are on the rise and violent crime and gun violence rank among Americans’ top five concerns, made this photo an important image. We believe it shows the incredible toll that a shooter with a high-powered rifle was able to exact in mere seconds.

Our job as journalists is to inform our community so our readers can more fully understand what’s happening around them and make important decisions as part of the democratic process. We also wanted to minimize the harm, and the invasion of privacy, to the victims’ families as much as possible. For now we’ve decided to run just one image, in which victims’ faces are covered, and to use it in the most limited way possible – cropping the photo to show less of one victim’s exposed body and reducing the resolution. We also don’t plan to use this photo repeatedly, but believe it is important to publish here as part of the public record — and part of our continuing coverage of public policies around crime and guns, as well as the underlying causes of violence. Here’s a more detailed explanation of the decision from Sun-Times Executive Editor Jennifer Kho.

We know that a “person of interest” has been apprehended. He’s local, 21 years old, grew up here. We all wonder about his motive.

As I’m writing this, a friend just sent me a note from his rabbi about a member of North Shore Congregation Israel who was murdered Monday.

Both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke about the horror in Highland Park. Harris will be in Chicago on Tuesday and it’s likely she will further address gun violence. Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, with Rotering and many law enforcement officials, gave a press briefing from that firehouse — the one next to the city’s pool, where we were supposed to be celebrating our nation’s independence.

The Highland Park mass shooting is getting global attention, as it should: It’s the worst mass attack in recent Illinois history.

As we mourn the Highland Park victims, let’s not forget the chronic loss of life in Chicago happening almost every day from gun violence.

On Chicago’s South and West sides, nine people were killed and at least 52 others were wounded by gunfire in Chicago as of Monday evening on this Fourth of July weekend.

In May, the massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde were added to the tragically growing list of mass shootings in the U.S.

And now Highland Park.

I’ve been reporting on gun massacres for years — since the 1999 Columbine school shootings. But always from a distance. I wasn’t there when the killing happened.

Until this July Fourth.

When I was.

Editor’s note: As part of their investigation, authorities have learned that Robert “Bobby” Crimo III is 21 years old, not 22 as initially reported. This story has been updated to reflect the correct information.