The father of a man arrested in connection with a mass shooting in Illinois liked a tweet supporting the Second Amendment days after the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas.
Robert E Crimo III, 22, was detained by police on Monday as a “person of interest” in the shooting that left six people dead and 36 injured at a July 4th parade in Highland Park.
Mr Crimo was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder on Tuesday.
It has since emerged that on 27 May - three days after 19 children and two teachers were murdered at an elementary school in Uvalde - his father Bob Crimo’s Twitter account liked a tweet that read: “Protect the Second Amendment like your life depends on it.”
The Second Amendment is the part of the US Constitution that is used to protect the right to bear arms.
According to his Twitter page, deli owner Mr Crimo, who ran for mayor in Highland Park in April 2019, follows only one account – an archived account of ex-President Donald Trump’s tweets.
There are also seemingly no tweets from his public Twitter account, which only appears to have replied to a video of Trump giving a press conference about the coronavirus pandemic in May 2020.
He was defeated by the town’s current mayor, Nancy Rotering, who ran her liberal campaign partly on a platform about gun control.
His son was arrested seven hours after a gunman perched on a rooftop opened fire on families waving flags and children riding bikes at the Independence Day parade on Monday in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.
The gunman climbed on to the roof of a business using a ladder in an alley, police said.
Police identified Crimo as a person of interest in the shooting and said he should be considered armed and dangerous.
Hours later, they announced he had been taken into custody following a brief chase near Lake Forest, about six miles from the site of the massacre.
Crimo goes by the nickname Bobby and is an amateur rapper. He had reportedly uploaded a number of videos online, many months before the shooting, filled with violent imagery and depictions of mass murder.
He goes by the stage name “Awake the Rapper” and has more than 16,000 listeners per month on his Spotify page with a net worth of $100,000 (£82,645).
A recent video posted by Crimo on YouTube appeared to show the aftermath of a school shooting with him draping himself in an American flag.
In 2020, he was pictured attending a Trump rally dressed as the main character from “Where’s Waldo?”
In another photo on Twitter, he was seen wrapped in a Trump flag like a cape. He was also pictured sporting an FBI cap and he had liked a video of Joe Biden.
Police said they did not know what the motive was for the shooting in Highland Park. The wounded ranged in age from eight to 85, including four or five children.
Nicolas Toledo, a man his 70s, was the first victim identified late on Monday by his family.
Another victim was Jacki Sundheim, a teacher at a synagogue in Highland Park. The North Shore Congregation Israel confirmed her death in an email to congregants.
At least one of those killed was a Mexican national, a senior Mexican Foreign Ministry official confirmed on Twitter.
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the Uvdale shooting was on May 27.
Additional reporting by agencies.
