‘Our lives were shattered forever’: Survivor of Highland Park massacre talks about life since the shooting

It’s been two years since Keely Roberts and her twin sons were wounded by a gunman in the mass shooting at Highland Park’s Independence Day parade.

Two years since what she called “the total annihilation of our lives.”

The family that walked together from their Highland Park home to the parade route that morning “is gone,” Roberts said during an online news conference Wednesday. “Our lives were shattered forever.”

Roberts’ now 10-year-old twin boys, Cooper and Luke, were the youngest victims of the violence that day. Cooper was shot in the spine and paralyzed from the waist down; Luke was hit by shrapnel.

Roberts was shot in the leg; Her four daughters and husband weren’t physically injured. But all of them are scarred by a horrific day Roberts said “lives on forever.”

Robert E. Crimo III of Highwood is charged in the shooting spree, which left seven people dead and 48 others wounded.

Keely Roberts and other victims and relatives of victims were in Lake County court last week when the defendant backed out of a plea deal that would’ve sent him to prison for the rest of his life.

He’s now scheduled to face trial in February on dozens of charges, including 21 counts of first-degree murder.

Roberts called the defendant’s decision to withdraw his expected guilty plea “another example of the re-victimization of victims.”

Roberts described the shock of seeing the defendant enter the courtroom in a wheelchair despite — unlike her son — having the ability to walk.

“That one felt like a knife to the heart,” said Roberts, who never named the defendant during the roughly 30-minute news conference. “(It) took my breath away.”

Roberts said she hopes justice eventually will be served.

“I have come to believe that there is not going to be closure,” she said. “The wound is too big, too deep.”