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Moments after the July 4 parade in Highland Park, Illinois, became a mass-shooting bloodbath on Monday morning, Tom Brooks’ son spotted two-year-old Aiden McCarthy from the top of a parking garage stairwell.
“He looks and is like, ‘Dad, there’s a boy there.’ I looked over and sure enough, there was a boy underneath” a man’s body, Brooks told The Daily Beast.
Police say 21-year-old Robert Crimo III rained gunfire on the peaceful celebration, killing seven people and injuring dozens more. But even as the country struggles to make sense of another mass killer easily accessing assault-style weapons and shooting people indiscriminately, it has been especially shaken by the McCarthy family’s story.