Plea Deal in Illinois Parade Shooting Falls Apart, Upsetting Victims’ Families

Relatives of the victims of a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., two summers ago somberly filed into a courtroom on Wednesday morning.

They had assembled with a hopeful expectation: that the accused gunman had agreed to change his plea in the murders of seven people to guilty, bringing some measure of resolution to the residents of Highland Park, a quiet, upscale suburb 25 miles north of Chicago, and sparing the families the pain of a trial next spring.

But the families left the courtroom in anguish and disgust. The accused, Robert Crimo III, 23, rejected a plea agreement that lawyers were preparing to present to a judge, dealing a blow to prosecutors, his own public defenders and the families of the victims, who sat in shocked silence when he told the judge that he would stick with his earlier plea of not guilty.

“We came to court today in hopes that we could put this out of our minds,” Leah Sundheim, the daughter of one of the victims, Jacquelyn Sundheim, said afterward. “All I wanted was to be able to fully grieve my mom.”

The hearing in Lake County, Ill., began with a prosecutor, Ben Dillon, announcing that Mr. Crimo had agreed to plead guilty to seven counts of first-degree murder and 48 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm. In addition to seven people who were killed when gunfire broke out during the parade in 2022, dozens more were wounded. Mr. Crimo’s parents, Robert Crimo Jr., and Denise Pesina, sat in the gallery directly behind him.

Judge Victoria A. Rossetti turned to the younger Mr. Crimo, who had entered the courtroom with a blank expression and using a wheelchair, and asked him to affirm that he had discussed the agreement outlined by the prosecutor with his lawyers. He refused to speak, and the judge ordered the court into recess.