Man accused of killing 7 people at July Fourth parade in Illinois pleads not guilty
WAUKEGAN, Ill. — Attorneys for Robert E. “Bobby” Crimo III entered a not guilty plea at his arraignment in Lake County Circuit Court on Wednesday after a grand jury indicted him on 117 felony counts for the July Fourth mass shooting in Highland Park that killed seven people and wounded dozens of others.
During the hearing, Judge Victoria Rossetti informed Crimo, 21, of the range of sentences he could face, including natural life if he is convicted of first-degree murder. Manacled at the waist, wearing dark blue jail scrubs and a medical mask, Crimo answered in a clear voice that he understood.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to return to court Nov. 1 for a case management conference.
Authorities allege Crimo, who grew up in Highland Park, climbed onto a store building and fired more than 80 rounds from an assault-style rifle into the crowd along the city’s Independence Day parade route before fleeing in the ensuing chaos.
Police said Crimo disguised himself as a woman and dropped the rifle while escaping.
He was arrested later that day after a police officer spotted him driving in North Chicago. Police have said that after the Highland Park shooting, Crimo drove to the vicinity of Madison, Wisconsin, where he allegedly contemplated attacking another gathering.
—Chicago Tribune
Parkland jury to follow killer’s path through high school crime scene
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Jurors will trace the path of the confessed Parkland gunman at the high school where he murdered 17people. The trip to the crime scene will be Thursday morning, as the prosecution continues its portion of the sentencing trial.
The gunman’s defense attorneys waived Nikolas Cruz’s right to be there. He remains isolated from other inmates in Broward County’ smain jail.
The freshman building has been preserved as a crime scene in preparation for this day. The jury will be allowed to observe the items and rooms left behind after the shooter roamed the hallways at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, firing into classrooms or shooting as people fled through the hallways of the three-floor building.
Prosecutors say the visit will help the jury understand the horror of that day as they consider the death penalty.
The crime scene is the 1200 building of the Stoneman Douglas campus, commonly called the freshman building. Cruz has confessed to walking into the building shortly before dismissal on Valentine’s Day 2018, assembling an AR-15-style rifle, and opening fire.
The building has not been used since the shooting, and a new freshman building has been put in place, but the school district cannot demolish the old building until prosecutors no longer need it. They have argued that keeping the building until now has been “an absolute necessity,” because it offers a true depiction of how and where the massacre happened, they say.
—South Florida Sun Sentinel
Pig organs revived hour after death in scientific advance
Scientists successfully revived vital organs from deceased pigs with a technology that shows promise for organ transplantation and further blurs the line between life and death.
The research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, challenges the assumption that tissue death is swift and irreversible,as the scientists were able to restore the function of several organs an hour after the pigs’ hearts had stopped.
“The latest findings raise a slew of questions — not least, whether medical and biological determinations of death will need revising,” Brendan Parent, director of transplant ethics and policy research at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, said in a commentary accompanying the article. The findings, he said, may also force a rethink of critical-care processes.
Shortly after cardiac arrest, blood stops coursing through the body, resulting in a lack of oxygen and nutrient circulation that sets off a cascade of events leading to cellular death and organ injury. Scientists have been looking for ways to protect cells and organs from this process for years.
Researchers led by David Andrijevic of Yale University’s School of Medicine adapted a technology called BrainEx for whole-body use and found it performed better than a standard technique for artificially adding oxygen to blood — called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO — that’s used in hospitals to support patients whose organs have failed.
The tweaked system, designed by Andrijevic and two colleagues and called OrganEx, allowed oxygen to be recirculated through the pigs’ bodies, preserving cells and organs an hour after a cardiac arrest. The group had earlier shown that BrainEx could restore some activity in the cells of pig brains after hours of oxygen deprivation.
The findings hold promise for preserving and transporting organs for transplant, researchers said, although they were reluctant to speculate about other uses.
—Bloomberg News
US Senate votes to approve Sweden and Finland joining NATO
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO on Wednesday, with the resolution gaining the support of 95 senators.
The single dissenting vote came from Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who argued that there should be less focus on security in Europe and much more on the threat from China.
U.S. President Joe Biden has strongly backed the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, and referred the matter to the Senate for consideration in July.
The vote in Washington followed a vote in France's National Assembly earlier on Wednesday, in which 209 deputies voted in favor of Swedish and Finnish membership, while 46 voted against. The Senate, the second chamber of the French parliament, voted to approve the accession two weeks ago.
Sweden and Finland applied to join the Western defense alliance in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Until now, the two countries have been close partners, but not members, of NATO.
Before the accession protocols can enter into force, they must be ratified by all 30 NATO member states, two-thirds of which have already given their approval for the new members.
—dpa
