The parents of accused Highland Park parade shooter Robert Crimo III had multiple encounters with law enforcement while the 21-year-old was growing up in the wealthy Chicago suburb, including with his mother once pleading guilty for leaving him alone in a hot car for almost a half-hour in 2002, when he was 2 years old.
Police reports show officers were called to the family's home in Highland Park for various domestic violence incidents between Crimo's parents, Robert, his father, and Denise Pesina, at least nine times in the four years between 2010 and 2014, including cases where Pesina hit her husband with a screwdriver and with her shoe, reported the New York Post.
Neither person has faced any charges of domestic violence, according to the police, who released the report after their son was arrested for opening fire on the Independence Day parade in Highland Park, killing seven and injuring 40 others, including one boy whose spine was severed in the gunfire.
Pesina pleaded guilty in the car incident after she left her son in the car alone in a toy store parking lot while temperatures reached almost 80 degrees outside, the police records showed.
In another incident, the elder Robert told police in August 2010 that his wife was intoxicated and hit him in the head. Pesina, in turn, said she was drinking because her husband "disrespected and belittled" her, police reports show.
Two months later, the police were called back after Pesina allegedly hit her husband with a screwdriver. The report said she told police he had been "making mean statements to me” and "calling me names." Her husband told police he didn't want the screwdriver claim in the reports.
Despite the string of incidents, neither person was charged with domestic violence, but the couple called the police on each other to report drunken driving.
Most recently, Pesina was shown on video obtained by CBS News shortly after the July Fourth mass shooting confronting a SWAT team in Highland Park while the manhunt was going on for her son.
The network reported that she had been in contact with police for several hours after the shooting, and it later emerged that a business she owned had a mailbox located in a UPS Store blocks away from the shooting scene.
The suspect's parents are under scrutiny after his father admitted signing a card application allowing his son to buy guns, including the semi-automatic weapon used in the parade shootings.
The elder Robert told the Post in an interview this week that he does not feel guilty about how his son obtained the gun. He sponsored the application just months after police called his son a "clear and present danger" after he threatened to kill relatives in 2019 and insisted he has "zero" involvement in the July Fourth massacre.
The elder Robert, a one-time mayoral candidate in Highland Park, said he sponsored the license because he thought his son was planning to use his weapon at a shooting range and that he "bought everything on his own, and they’re registered to him."
"You know, he drove there; he ordered them; he picked them up. They did his background check on each one," he said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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