A moment of silence, scheduled for two minutes precisely one week after a gunman killed seven people and wounded dozens more at Highland Park’s Fourth of July Parade, lasted approximately seven minutes for those who gathered at the scene of the carnage.
A crowd of more than 450 people stood in Port Clinton Square in downtown Highland Park Monday going silent without any signal at 10:14 a.m., which is when the shooting started a week before, paying its respects to those killed and injured and comforting each other.
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Some members of the crowd held hands, and others put their arms around each other. A few held their cellphones as high as they could to take pictures. More stood silent on Central Avenue and other locations around the central business district.
[ What we know about the mass shooting at a Highland Park Fourth of July parade ]
Brett Schwartz, a lifelong Highland Park resident who teaches at Deerfield High School and has two children at Highland Park High School, stood silent for the seven minutes. He spoke as people started walking away, most still quiet.
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“It was good to see people coming together and standing there so long,” he said. “They felt moved to come here. So many people have been helping each other for the last week.”
When a toddler started to cry more than two minutes into the moment of silence, the child’s mother took her from the crowd. Marilyn Sommer, a Highland Park resident who was there, could not resist a brief remark.
“Let someone cry,” Sommer said under her breath as the mother took her child away. “We should all be crying,” she added after the moment. “This gun violence should not be acceptable.”
Jim Axelrod, another lifelong Highland Park resident, said he was not at the parade, but needed to be with members of the community Monday to remember what happened. He does not believe the city will be the same.
[ These are the victims of the Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park ]
“I was very moved,” he said. “For us, this will be like Sept. 11 was for New York. It’s not the same magnitude, but it’s going to change Highland Park the way Sept. 11 changed New York City.”
Schwartz said he was sad, but not shocked. Mass shootings have become too common place, he said.
“We’ve grown to accept it,” Schwartz said. “We must find a way to stop it.”
The moment marked precisely one week since Robert Crimo, III allegedly used a high-powered rifle from a rooftop overlooking Port Clinton Square to kill and wound parade-goers. Since then, victims were buried, some remain hospitalized and residents are barely coming to grips with the massacre.
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As people began to walk away from Port Clinton Square, there was thunder, dark clouds and rain started to fall.
