An Illinois man charged in the killing of seven people at a Fourth of July parade was ordered held in jail without bond on Wednesday, as questions continued to mount about why he was allowed to buy guns despite alarming police encounters.

The man, Robert E. Crimo III, 21, was accused of climbing onto a rooftop on Monday and using a high-powered rifle to spray dozens of bullets onto the parade route in Highland Park, Ill., a Chicago suburb. The police said Crimo legally purchased the gun after the authorities had received two troubling reports about him.

In April 2019, someone called the police to say that he had attempted suicide, and a few months later, officers seized several knives from him after a relative reported that Crimo planned to “kill everyone”. Months after those encounters, Crimo’s father sponsored his son’s application for a state permit that is required to own guns. That Crimo was then approved for that permit, and that he soon purchased several weapons, including at least two rifles, called into question the application and potency of Illinois’s firearm laws.

Though the state’s gun laws are among the country’s strictest, they did not stop Crimo from legally arming himself. Prosecutors said Crimo purchased the Smith & Wesson semiautomatic rifle used in the attack in 2020, the year after the knife seizure. Crimo, who appeared by video in a Lake County courtroom on Wednesday, told Judge Theodore Potkonjak of the state circuit court that he did not have a lawyer.

A public defender, Gregory Ticsay, said Crimo did not have money to post for bail but provided little other information about his client. In court, Ben Dillon, a prosecutor, described in the fullest detail yet how officials say the attack unfolded on Monday.

He said Crimo used a fire escape to climb onto a rooftop in the city’s downtown. There, Dillon said, the gunman opened fire, emptying a 30- round magazine, then another, and then inserted a third magazine. Officials recovered 83 bullet casings, Dillon said.

Crimo then left the roof and fled through an alley, and along the way dropped the gun, which federal officials soon traced to him.

New York Times News Service