Home Scandal and Gossip Highland Park shooter threatened to kill family with knives 3 yrs ago

Highland Park shooter threatened to kill family with knives 3 yrs ago

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Robert Bobby Crimo threatened to kill family with knives
Robert Bobby Crimo threatened to kill family with knives along with suicide threat 3 years ago. Pictured, Highland Park shooter's parents Robert and Denise Crimo. Images via social media.
Robert Bobby Crimo threatened to kill family with knives
Robert Bobby Crimo threatened to kill family with knives along with suicide threat 3 years ago. Pictured, Highland Park shooter’s parents Robert and Denise Crimo. Image via social media.

Robert Crimo Highland Park shooter threatened to kill family with knives 3 yrs ago but was nevertheless still able to legally purchase up to 5 guns less than two years later. 

Getting your hands on weapons is a very simple affair… even if you have previously threatened to harm or kill. 

Robert Crimo, the 22-year-old man charged with killing seven in the July 4 mass shooting in Highland Park, threatened to ‘kill everyone’ in his home with a ‘collection of knives’ 3 years before allegedly going on his shooting rampage.

Officials revealed in a press conference on Tuesday afternoon that police were called to Crimo’s home in April 2019 after receiving a report that he had attempted suicide a week earlier.

Officers spoke to Crimo and his parents, but the matter was handled by mental-health professionals at the time, said Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli at a news conference.

‘There was no law-enforcement action to be taken. It was a mental-health issue handled by those professionals,’ Covelli said.

How was troubled teen legally still able to purchase guns? 

A few months later, in September 2019, a concerned family member then reported to cops that Crimo had made deadly threats against his relatives, Covelli said.

‘A family member reported that Crimo said he was going to kill everyone and Crimo had a collection of knives,’ Covelli said. ‘The police responded to his residence. The police removed 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from Crimo’s home.’

There was no probable cause to arrest Crimo at the time because none of his relatives signed complaints regarding the incident, according to Covelli.

Authorities said Crimo was legally able to purchased at least five firearms — including the AR-15-style rifle he allegedly used in Monday’s massacre — despite the two interactions with law enforcement in 2019.

Covelli said the suspect’s stash of firearms were purchased by him in 2020 and 2021 — after the 2019 incident in which his knives were seized.

Cops immediately notified Illinois State Police in the wake of the knife incident, but the agency said Crimo didn’t have a firearm-owner’s identification card at the time that could be revoked or reviewed.

Illinois enacted a ‘red-flag law’ — the Firearms Restraining Order Act – in 2019 which allows family members to apply for a court order so that authorities can confiscate weapons from those deemed to be dangerous.

But despite the law being in place for two years, officials said it is rarely utilized the nypost reported.

Illinois State Rep. Denyse Wang Stoneback sponsored legislation just last month to try and help educate residents on how they can use it.

The disclosure to harm family members led to a flurry of comments, including this one below which caught this author’s eye:

‘Why aren’t any of the agencies reporting people like Crimo who publicly threaten them selves and others to the NCIS? He and the others like him are clearly mental defectives who shouldn’t ever pass a background check for a firearm.’ 

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