Highland Park, United States — A wealthy
Chicago suburb was reeling Tuesday from a devastating shooting that saw gunfire
tear through a July 4 holiday crowd, as online posts and videos pointed to the
troubled mind of the 21-year-old suspected gunman.
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The gunman, who grew up in Highland Park, where the
shooting occurred, was arrested on Monday after six people were killed and two
dozen injured during an Independence Day parade.
He was taken into custody after law enforcement
launched a massive manhunt for the gunman who sprayed paradegoers with dozens
of semi-automatic rounds from a rooftop.
“We’re all still reeling,” Highland Park Mayor Nancy
Rotering told NBC’s Today show on Tuesday.
“Unbelievable shock,” Rotering said. “Everybody
knows somebody who was affected by this directly.”
On Tuesday, police and
FBI agents looking for
evidence were sifting through belongings left behind by members of the crowd as
they fled.
Strollers, bicycles, folding chairs, and other items
littered the parade route through the main street of Highland Park as American
flags flapped in the breeze from brick buildings.
Disturbing online content
The shooter’s online
postings include violent content that alluded to guns and shootings.
One YouTube video posted eight months ago featured
cartoons of a gunman and people being shot.
A voice-over says “I need to just do it.”
It adds: “It is my destiny. Everything has led up to
this. Nothing can stop me, not even myself.”
Rotering, the mayor, said the firearm used in the
shooting was “legally obtained.”
“This nation needs to have a conversation about
these weekly events involving the murder of dozens of people with legally
obtained guns,” she said. “We need to re-examine the laws.”
The shooting is the latest in a wave of gun violence
plaguing the
US, where approximately 40,000 deaths a year are caused by
firearms, according to the
Gun Violence Archive.
The deeply divisive debate over gun control was
reignited by two massacres in May that saw 10 black people gunned down at an
upstate New York supermarket and 21 people, mostly young children, slain at an
elementary school in Texas.
The Highland Park shooting cast a pall over
Independence Day, when towns and cities across the country hold similar parades
and people attend barbecues, sporting events and fireworks displays.
Five of the six people killed, all adults, died at
the scene. The sixth was taken to the hospital but succumbed to wounds there.
Highland Park Hospital, where most of the victims
were taken, said it had received 25 people with gunshot wounds aged eight to
85.
President Joe Biden voiced his shock and vowed to
keep fighting “the epidemic of gun violence.”
“I’m not going to give up,” he said.
Last week, Biden signed the first significant
federal bill on gun safety in decades, just days after the US Supreme Court
ruled that Americans have a fundamental right to carry a handgun in public.
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