CHICAGO — Mayor Nancy Rotering had just started walking in Highland Park’s Independence Day parade when the music from the high school’s marching band ended abruptly, replaced by an ominous cadence.
“I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I was hearing was the gunshots,” she said.
An instant later, spectators and marchers bolted from the noise and first responders ran toward it as the terrible realization struck that the North Shore town was under attack. Rotering and others screamed at the crowd to leave as a rooftop sniper fired dozens of shots, killing seven people and wounding more than 20.
Rotering, a near-lifelong resident of Highland Park and its mayor since 2011, was immediately thrust into a global spotlight while trying to lead her town through an unimaginable crisis and pressing for changes to America’s gun laws.
Nine years ago, Rotering signed a city ordinance banning assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, and on Monday she and Gov. J.B. Pritzker joined President Joe Biden at the White House to commemorate the passage of new restrictions.
Highland Park has 30,000 residents but a small town vibe, so perhaps it’s no surprise Rotering has a connection with the suspect, 21-year-old Robert Crimo III: She was his Cub Scout leader years ago, recalling him only as “a quiet little boy,” and she defeated his father Bob in the 2019 mayoral election.
Speaking with the Tribune hours after attending three funerals Friday, Rotering described how her job and her town have changed in the wake of the shooting.
“There’s so much need right now in our community that I am just working hard to make sure that people who need comforting are being comforted, people who need resources know how to get them and people who are in pain know that they’re not alone,” she said.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How are the people of Highland Park doing at this point?
A: They’re really still working through an unbelievably traumatic and violent experience. I went to the funerals of Jacki Sundheim, Stephen Straus and Mr. (Nicolas) Toledo-Zaragoza today and people can’t process how this has happened to their loved ones.
The grief and the agony is profound. A few of the folks at one of the funerals are recovering from gunshot wounds. They just went to celebrate the Fourth of July with their families and now, for all of us, we will be changed forever. We will heal as a community but we will never be exactly who we were before the Fourth of July.
Q: What has been the biggest challenge in leading the city through this?
A: Getting information to people who need it. We’ve worked really hard, but people who are so shellshocked are also having a hard time being able to use their usual abilities to get information. I think the biggest challenge is the magnitude of pain. It’s indescribable. It’s just indescribable — the pain, the fury, the frustration, the anger, the sense of disbelief, the sense of how did this happen and trying to find somebody to hold accountable.
Yesterday I felt we were moving a little bit forward. Today feels like we’re just deep in our pain. I drove by the high school twice and the parking lot was overflowing where people are going for counseling. Every person I’ve come across, I’m saying to them, “Have you gone for counseling?” Virtually all of them have but I know thousands have not.
So this is going to take us a long time to recover from. We will absolutely recover, but one person said, “I don’t think Highland Park will ever be the same.” That’s got to be true. You can’t come through something like this and be unchanged. But that being said, we’re a strong community. We care deeply about one another. The generosity of people from across the country has been tremendous, and we will continue to take one step at a time.
Q: Other than the shooter, where does accountability lie?
A: We’ve been having conversations about, “Are the laws strong enough?” My stance, obviously, is that I feel very deeply that there’s no place for combat weapons in everyday society. I went to look at the site just now where the shooter was and where the victims were, and the fact that he had a weapon that could create such violence in such a short period of time makes no sense. It makes no sense.
We’re a civilized nation. These guns need to go. We’re not in a battle zone. I was at Stephen Straus’ funeral and his grandson Toby read (the war poem) “In Flanders Fields.” He said, “My grandfather was in a war zone at the end of his life.” And that really sunk into the group because his grandfather was in a zone where somebody was using a combat weapon to kill people.
Q: Is there anything else Highland Park can do in terms of gun control measures?
A: We’ve got to figure this out in terms of what is strategically appropriate within the law, what we can do as a municipality versus the state government versus the federal government. An interesting concept people have brought up is that just as the opiate manufacturers were held liable for the deaths of so many people who died from opiate overdoses, maybe we can look at manufacturers’ liability for civilian deaths at the hands of these guns. But I think that’s probably more of a federal-level effort.
As far as the city is concerned, we did the maximum that we could within the constraints of the law as it existed … A statewide ban (on assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines) is better, a federal ban is better than that.
Q: How do you think the city’s police force handled the incident?
A: They did a fantastic job. Our first responders were equipped, they were on the scene, they took action, they did everything they should have done and went way above and beyond. They were exemplary, and we’ve been really privileged to have additional services provided by the region’s police agencies, the Lake County Major Crime Task Force, the FBI and the ATF … It really went unbelievably well.
Q: What do you think the lasting effect of this is going to be on Highland Park?
A: I think given the broad range of humanity that lives here, it’s going to manifest itself in a broad range of ways. People have approached me and said, “We’re going to have the biggest blowout ever next year.” And other people have said, “I’m never going to a parade again.”
We know that we need to memorialize and commemorate the one-year anniversary of this horror in an appropriate way and not a celebratory way. So we will be doing that, but every single person I’ve come across has a different reaction and is having a different way of working through it. Some people haven’t slept since it occurred. It’s heartbreaking. It is absolutely heartbreaking what this has done to our community.
And again, you know, we are strong, we support each other, we’ve always been there for each other and will come out of this as strong as ever. But we will be changed and that breaks my heart.
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