Highland Park, Ill., is searching for an artist to design a permanent memorial to the seven people killed when a gunman opened fire on the city's Independence Day parade in 2022, moving the North Shore suburb closer to formally marking one of the deadliest mass shootings in state history.
The city posted a request for artist qualifications on Sept. 11, 2026, four years after a shooter positioned on a Central Avenue rooftop fired into the crowd, killing Katherine Goldstein, Irina and Kevin McCarthy, Jacki Sundheim, Stephen Straus, Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, and Eduardo Uvaldo, and wounding at least 48 others. The McCarthy couple's two-year-old son, Aiden, was found wandering alone after his parents shielded him.
The shooter, Robert E. Crimo III, pleaded guilty in March 2024 and is serving seven consecutive life sentences without parole.
Source: NationGraph.
The memorial, called the Place of Remembrance, is the result of years of community deliberation that began with spontaneous tributes at Port Clinton Square and Rose Terrace, then moved through listening sessions and a dedicated planning committee. City officials have framed it as a space for reflection rather than a monument to the attack itself, a distinction that has shaped debates in Newtown, Parkland, Orlando and other communities grappling with how to memorialize gun violence without centering the perpetrator or retraumatizing survivors.
That tension has played out in Highland Park too. Some residents and families have pushed for prominent, visible recognition along the parade route where the shooting happened. Others have urged restraint, worried that downtown could become defined by the tragedy rather than by the cultural life, including the nearby Ravinia Festival, that the community built around it. The choice of site carries particular weight for Jacki Sundheim's congregation, North Shore Congregation Israel, where she had worked for decades.
Mayor Nancy Rotering, who became a national gun-control advocate following the shooting and helped push Illinois's 2023 assault weapons ban into law, has led the memorial planning effort. The city has not publicly disclosed the proposed site, budget, or timeline for selecting an artist. Those details may be contained in the full RFQ document.
With an artist selection process now underway, Highland Park is entering the phase where the memorial moves from community conversation to concrete design.
