Fourth of July shooting suspects Robert Crimo of his strange and violent online trail | US News
The young man suspected of killing six people and wounding dozens at a Fourth of July parade uploaded a video showing the location of the attack for the mass shooting.
Robert E Crimo III, 22, was arrested by police hours after shots were fired at the crowd during celebrations in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.
Accounts that appear to belong to Crimo posted a number of violent and strange videos online, including crudely drawn animations of a violent shooting.
This drawing appears in one of Crimo’s music videos. It shows him in a pool of blood after being shot by police
Scene of the shooting
The video with Central Avenue, where the shooting took place, was filmed almost a year before the attack.
It appears to have been filmed early in the morning and shows the street low apart from American flags fluttering in the wind.
The street where the shooting took place was filmed and uploaded by Crimo before the attack. This intersection is less than 500ft from where the attacker apparently started firing
Crimo edited it in a longer video showing him smoking while looking at an American flag half-mast over a memorial stone.
In the video, he is wearing a clear backpack. These bags have been adopted by some American schools in an attempt to combat school shootings because they make it harder to hide a gun.
Crimo poses looking at an American flag on half mast, usually a sign of respect for people who have died
The song Spirit in the Sky accompanies the video and begins with the text “When I did and they lay me to rest / Gonna go to the place that’s the best.”
‘My actions will be brave’
A second video, uploaded in October last year, combines some of his videos into one.
It is widely referred to as a possible video manifesto by those who analyze his online track, because it includes a recorded audio message from him.
In the rumbling voiceover, he says, “Like a sleepwalker I break through … my deeds will be brave and my mind is not necessary. I know what to do.”
In the background, a newspaper clipping on the wall marks the death of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who shot US President John F Kennedy in 1963.
Crimo filmed a video with a newspaper featuring the death of Lee Harvey Oswald
Oswald shot infamous at the passing presidential parade from above when he hid on the sixth floor of a building. Likewise, it is believed that the person who carried out the mass shooting in Chicago jumped off the roof of a building after the parade.
Crimo’s reference to the assassin of the former president seems to be part of a broader interest in presidents and patriotism.
Crimo seems to have waited to dismiss Donald Trump from Air Force One when he was president
He uploaded a video of himself waiting in 2020 for Donald Trump to land in Air Force One and captured the moment the president was passing by at that moment as part of a motorcade. There is also a photo of him draped in a Trump flag and attending a rally for the former president.
Crimo is draped in a Trump flag
American flags appear in a number of his archived videos. Crimo is an aspiring rapper and in one of his music videos he holds an American flag behind him after alluding to school shootings.
Crimo poses in tactical gear for an American flag in one of his music videos
Another video uploaded in 2020 has a reference to “enemies in the US”.
In it, Crimo films himself staring and close to the camera at a remix of people talking and making music.
In the end, he suddenly blinks times when the recording asks “as you can see, who and what are the enemies of freedom in the US?”
‘Robert Crimo Archive’
This content uploaded by Crimo was easy to find, despite social media platforms taking swift action to delete his accounts.
He seems to have deliberately created an archive of content that would be easy to find with basic internet searches.
Crimo used the artist name Awake. He created multiple accounts under his different names and set up at least two blogs that indexed his content.
A specific YouTube account under a third name has also been created. Videos uploaded to that channel have been dated and are labeled “Robert Crimo Archive”.
Crimo carefully tagged videos as part of an archive created with one of its secondary accounts
He also made backup copies of his content by duplicating many of his videos and photos across different platforms and accounts.
Some of the content includes jokes, some of which seem to be designed to annoy or annoy those who are looking for answers.
At the end of one uneventful 18-minute long video of him building a cabin next to his family home he says “Goodbye, Mr FBI agent”.
Crimo’s motive for building his archive is unknown.
De Data and Forensics team is a multilingual unit dedicated to delivering transparent journalism to Sky News. We collect, analyze and visualize data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia stories, we aim to better explain the world, while also showing how our journalism is done.
Fourth of July shooting suspects Robert Crimo of his strange and violent online trail | US News
Source link Fourth of July shooting suspects Robert Crimo of his strange and violent online trail | US News
