They helped people during the Highland Park shooting. But they don’t want praise: ‘I did what anyone else would have done’

When Lindsay Meltzer ushered approximately 100 people into the basement of Bright Bowls — the business she has operated on Central Avenue — to escape a gunman in downtown Highland Park on July 4, she did not think she was doing anything special.

“I did what anyone else would have done,” Meltzer said.

Lucy Pinkwater, a teacher in Los Angeles and a Highland Park High School classmate of Meltzer, did not think getting young children into a circle to calm them after they fled the shooter was an extraordinary act, either.

“I didn’t do anything that anybody else wouldn’t do,” Pinkwater said.

Kevin Mottlowitz, a Highland Park resident watching the city’s Fourth of July parade with his family on Central Avenue when the gunman began his massacre, did not consider his split-second decisions to get his family to safety anything out of the ordinary.

“I did what any other father would have done,” Mottlowitz said.

Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering considers such people, who went out of their way to aid others as a gunman was firing into the crowd on Central Avenue between First and Second streets Monday, more than worthy of praise.

“We are extremely grateful to the people who stepped in to help save lives, to provide shelter to those running for their lives and to our first responders who ran into danger to help so many residents,” she said in a text Wednesday.

[ [What we know about the mass shooting at a Highland Park Fourth of July parade] ]

Meltzer, Pinkwater and Mottlowitz, were among a number of people who immediately thought of others when they realized something was terribly wrong at the July 4 parade in downtown Highland Park.

Before opening her business just over two years ago, Meltzer said watching the parade near the corner of Central and Second Street — the spot where Bobby Crimo III is accused of killing seven people with a high-powered rifle and wounding dozens of others — was a family tradition.

On Monday, Meltzer was hosting a gathering at Bright Bowls with healthy food and music. Friends and family were gathering before the parade began at 10 a.m.

“We were having a party here,” she said. “We had karaoke music. We were starting to watch the parade.”

After riders on horseback and ponies went by the business at 777 Central, just over two blocks west of where the shooter attacked, Pinkwater and Meltzer said everything changed. The marching band was running after the horses.

“The Highland Park High School band was sprinting down the street,” Meltzer said. “They had a look of terror in their eyes. They looked shaken.”

“They were dropping their instruments,” Pinkwater added.

As police came by telling everyone to leave and find shelter, Meltzer said she waved people into the store and showed them a back way into a large basement. Though the windows in the front of the store could not be covered, the glass doors at the back leading to the basement were lined with cardboard.

Amy Sliwicki, a Bright Bowls manager and Lake Forest resident, said when people came into the shop seeking shelter, they were ushered away from the glass windows and toward the basement where they could not be seen.

[ [These are the victims of the Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park] ]

While the adults were in one part of the basement, with many searching for news on their cellphones, Pinkwater gathered the children into a circle to keep them as calm as possible and away from the fear of their elders.

A veteran teacher, Pinkwater said she has been through numerous active shooter drills with schoolchildren. They get more intense each year, particularly since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six teachers were killed.

“You want to keep them calm and quiet,” she said. “Some of them were visibly shaken. There were some older ones who were really shook up. They joined us. We played quiet games. I didn’t want the kids to see the tears on their parents faces as they scrolled on their phones.”

Meltzer said people sheltered in the basement for approximately two hours before they were given word they could leave with police assistance. Her husband and members of her staff used their vehicles to shuttle the people home.

While Meltzer and Pinkwater did not hear the shots, Mottlowitz did. He said he and his family have gone to the parade for decades watching the activity from Port Clinton Square, near where the shooter opened fire. He was there with six family members. Shortly after the parade started, he sensed something was amiss.

“I saw people running,” Mottlowitz said. “We moved to the left side of the courtyard where there was some shelter. Glass was breaking and bullets sprayed. I saw a woman lying there and looked to see if I could help. She was gone. There was nothing I could do.”

Separated from his wife for a while, Mottlowitz said his family was reunited and were able to leave the Port Clinton area with guidance from police.

Meltzer said she knows the memories of July 4, 2022, will linger for a long time. Though she did not hear the gunfire, she saw the looks on the faces of people who did.

“I can’t get the image of everyone running down the street with the look of horror on their faces out of my mind,” Meltzer said. “That’s going to be the PTSD for me.”