Crimo entered the plea quickly before opening statements were supposed to begin. The 24-year-old suspect made no additional statements before he left the Lake County Courthouse.

Police have said that on July 4, 2022, Crimo climbed up a fire escape to the rooftop of a building above Highland Park’s parade route and began shooting bullets at the spectators below.

Crimo killed Stephen Straus, 88; Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78; Eduardo Uvaldo, 69; Katherine Goldstein, 64; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63; and married couple Kevin McCarthy, 37, and Irina McCarthy, 35.

After the shooting, Crimo made it home, where he then took his mother’s car and drove about two hours north to Madison, Wisconsin. There, he allegedly considered staging another massacre at another July Fourth gathering. He was arrested upon returning to Illinois.

Prosecutors turned over around 10,000 pages of evidence and a videotaped interrogation, evidence in which police say Crimo confessed to the mass shooting.

Crimo’s guilty plea was the latest twist in his trial. A year after his arrest, Crimo fired his public defenders and said he would represent himself at trial. Then, a month later, he asked a judge to reinstate his public defender.

Last June, Crimo surprised the court by deciding at the last minute to forgo an expected plea deal and instead entered a plea of not guilty.

FOUR BIG DEADLINES IN 2025 THAT WILL TEST GOP TRIFECTA LEADERSHIP

Additionally, Crimo’s father, Robert Crimo Jr., previously pleaded guilty to seven felony counts of reckless conduct and was later sentenced to 60 days in prison for his role in agreeing to sponsor the gun application for his son, who was 19 years old at the time.

Crimo is facing life in prison for killing seven people and wounding nearly 50 more. The death penalty was abolished in Illinois in 2011. He will be sentenced on April 23.