Services planned Friday for 3 Highland Park parade victims

Mourners plan to remember three of the seven people killed when a gunman opened fire on a July 4 parade at services

APTOPIX Shooting July Fourth Parade (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Memorial services and funerals for three of the seven people killed when a gunman opened fire on a July 4 parade are scheduled Friday, the first formal opportunity to grieve the deaths of two beloved grandfathers and a former synagogue preschool teacher shot Monday during the annual event in the northern Chicago suburb of Highland Park.

Services are scheduled for 63-year-old Jacquelyn Sundheim, 88-year-old Stephen Straus and 78-year-old Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza through Friday.

Robert E. Crimo III, the accused 21-year-old gunman, was charged Wednesday with murdering seven people. Prosecutors have said they expect to bring attempted murder charges for each of the more than 30 people wounded in the attack on paradegoers gathered in the affluent suburb that is home to about 30,000 people near the Lake Michigan shore.

Services for another of the victims, 69-year-old Eduardo Uvaldo, are scheduled for Saturday.

Details for the remaining victims have not been made public. Authorities have identified them as 35-year-old Irina McCarthy and 37-year-old Kevin McCarthy who were attending the parade with their two-year-old son, and 64-year-old Katherine Goldstein, a mother of two.

Investigators said this week that the accused shooter, who lived in neighboring Highwood, legally purchased five weapons and planned the violent attack for weeks before he climbed to the roof of a business along the parade route and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle.

Investigators reported that Crimo fled the parade by blending in with the crowd, then drove to the Madison, Wisc. area where he contemplated a second attack before returning to the Highland Park area where his car was spotted by police.

Questions remain about whether Crimo should have been able to legally purchase firearms in Illinois. Illinois State Police officials have defended approving his approval for a gun license in December 2019, months after police received reports that he had made suicidal and violent threats.