US Independence Day mass shooter Robert Crimo “seriously contemplated” a second attack, police said on Wednesday. Ultimately, the gunman decided that he “hadn’t put enough thought” into it.
Crimo was charged on Tuesday with seven counts of first-degree murder and ordered held without bond on Wednesday. Two days earlier, he was arrested after an hours-long manhunt, which began when he allegedly opened fire from a rooftop upon a packed 4th of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Lake County Major Crimes Task Force spokesman Chris Covelli said that during the manhunt Crimo drove to nearby Madison, Wisconsin, where he “seriously contemplated” attacking another Independence Day celebration.
Crimo, who Covelli said had a firearm and around 60 rounds of ammunition in the car with him, decided not to follow through as he “hadn’t put enough thought or research into it.”
The shooter is believed to have spent several weeks planning the Highland Park attack. After firing 70 shots at the parade and discarding his weapon, police say that he escaped the scene dressed in women’s clothes and fled to his mother’s house, where he took her car and evaded law enforcement. He was eventually stopped and captured, five miles from the scene of the attack.