Nancy Rotering Highland Park mayor appears on Today, saying that Bobby Crimo legally obtained weapon used in shooting, was not known to cops while admitting social media posts were jarring. Understanding how disillusioned young males turn to nihilism, violence and mass shooting as a last resort.
He wasn’t on cops’ radar, but his ongoing social media postings ought to have at least raised questions …
Robert “Bobby” Crimo III, the “person of interest” arrested in the Highland Park parade mass shooting, used a legally obtained weapon during Monday’s 4th of July bloodbath — but was not known to police, the local mayor revealed Tuesday.
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering — who banned assault rifles in 2013 — during a “Today” show appearance said that she had known the suspect when he was a Cub Scout and she was the leader.
‘I don’t know where the gun came from, but I do know that it was legally obtained,’ Rotering told the NBC News morning show, without elaborating.
She said she didn’t believe he was ‘previously known to police’ before the massacre — but noted the apparent forewarnings in Crimo’s disturbing rap lyrics and social media posts.
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Ignoring society breakdown and ascribing mental illness instead
‘We know that several postings really reflected a plan and a desire to commit carnage for a long time in advance,’ said Rotering, who previously defeated Crimo’s dad when he ran for mayor.
She revealed that she knew the suspect, a 22-year-old aspiring rapper, going by th4e moniker, ‘Awake the Rapper,’ suggesting that he ‘clearly had a mental breakdown‘ before the carnage.
‘I know him as somebody who was a Cub Scout when I was the Cub Scout leader … He was just a little boy,’ she told “Today.”
Which raises the question, how does a seemingly non descript suburban young man living in an affluent community come to adopt nihilistic themes and veer towards violent predilections?
Continued Rotering: ‘And it’s one of those things where you step back and you say, ‘What happened? How did somebody become this angry, this hateful, to then take it out on innocent people who literally were just having a family day?’
Rotering went on to posture, ‘why do we as a nation allow this to happen with such regularity?’
Without necessarily pointing to the increasing disillusionment amongst young males who increasingly feel left behind, discarded and marginalized and adopting radical paradigms, along with the ongoing strains of an increasingly polarized society, both socially and economically – the offical instead concentrated on the ‘low hanging fruit’ of guns and access to such weapons.
Conversations political leaders are not willing to have
‘At some point, this nation needs to have a conversation about these weekly events involving the murder of dozens of people with legally obtained guns,’ Rotering stated.
‘If that’s what our laws stand for, then I think we need to re-examine the laws,’ she said, saying that ‘our values are askew.’
‘We as a country have to have a very strong conversation with ourselves … We’ve been talking about this literally for decades at this point. And it’s one of those things where you ask yourself, ‘If this reflects the values of who we are, what does that say about us as a nation?”
Rotering said she was shocked to get calls from mayors in other cities and towns who have suffered similar mass shootings (she shouldn’t be).
‘Whether it’s Buffalo, New York, whether it’s Uvalde, Texas, whether it’s Highland Park, Illinois, this is unbelievable to me that this is an acceptable part of who we are as a nation,’ she said to a television audience who has heard it all before.
