Highland Park shooter Robert "Bobby" Crimo III's parents Bob Crimo and Denise Pesina were "a problem" and they neglected their son, the suspect's former coach told Fox Digital. Robert Crimo was arrested on Monday after he opened fire at a 4th of July parade at Highland Park, Illinois, that killed seven people and left more than 40 wounded.
It was earlier been revealed that Robert Crimo, who used the pseudonym Awake the Rapper, had a troubled past and posted several violent songs and cryptic sketches and messages on social media, before finally going on a carnage on Monday. His father, Bob Crimo, also ran for mayor in Highland Park in 2019 while his mother was once arrested.
Problematic Parents
Robert Crimo was charged with seven counts of first-degree murder on Tuesday. Over the past day, a lot of revelations have been made about Robert Crimo and how he was a troubled child and had once made threats to commit suicide and, on another occasion, threatened to 'kill everyone" in his family.
On Tuesday, his former coach, Jeremy Cahnmann, said that Robert Crimo's parents were "a problem" and were often the last to pick him up from his after-school sports program.
"I remember the parents more than him because they were kind of a problem," said Cahnmann who also oversaw the after-school athletics program at Lincoln Elementary School. "There wasn't a lot of love in that family."
Crimo and his younger brother joined Cahnmann's Nerf football team when they were 9 or 10 years old. The former coach referred to Crimo's father, Bob Crimo, who is 58, and his mother, Denise Pesina, who is 48, saying that every week the Crimos were the last children there and that their parents had to be called to pick them up.
"The kid was really quiet, really soft-spoken, never made an issue," added Cahnmann, who now runs the Chicago-based company Brain Bash Trivia.
Pesina, however, was a pain, he said. "She got into it once with one of the heads of the program, she was yelling," he recalled. "It seemed like her kids were a nuisance to her," he told Fox Digital.
Difficult Life
Lake County Major Crime Task Force officials told news agencies that 22-year-old Robert Crimo used a 'high-powered rifle' and the attack was 'random and intentional'. The police arrested him while he was driving a 2010 silver Honda Fit.
His parents haven't spoken yet on this but his uncle Paul Crimo said earlier that he was "lonely" but "never showed any signs of violence". However, he also told that Robert Crimo would spend time alone and had lost his job during the pandemic and had since been living alone in an apartment behind his parents' home.
It has now been revealed that Crimo has a troubled past a lot of it was because of his parents. "The signs were there for a long time," a neighbor of Crimo told the outlet. "There were always police cars at the house. The parents were arguing, fighting all the time."
Robert Crimo, the alleged gunman, was an aspiring rapper, who grew up on McDaniels Avenue in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, with his parents, younger brother, and older sister.
In 2021, Crimo, who used by the stage name "Awake the Rapper," shared a scary music video with images of a stick figure carrying out an assault with a rifle while wearing tactical gear and a newspaper article on the assassination of John F. Kennedy's killer Lee Harvey Oswald.
His father Bob Crimo is the president of Bob's Pantry and Deli. He also ran for mayor in Highland Park in 2019 but was defeated by the town's current mayor. In a pre-election profile, Bob Crimo wrote: "I'm running as mayor as a person for the people in our community."
"It's my way of giving back to the community who have been so supportive of me over the years. I live local and I will stay local."
In 2018, Bob Crimo was pictured with Denise Pesina in an article in the Chicago Tribune. He calls his business "family-run and family-oriented."
Pesina, is a healer with a business named Trilogy Energy Systems. She frequently poses with her sphinx cat Sanjay in her candid self-revealing images that she shares on Facebook and Instagram.
She studied Traditional Chinese Medicine at Shanghai University and at The Ayurvedic Institute, a school in New Mexico that teaches the concepts and methods of Ayurveda, an alternative medical system, according to the website of her business.
Pesina was detained in Highland Park in February 2015 on suspicion of domestic battery while operating a motor vehicle, according to Patch.com at the time. However, not much is known about the case.
