What's Going On with the Highland Park Killer's Parents?

There might be something strange going on with the Highland Park killer’s parents, and the authorities aren’t yet willing to say exactly what.

It’s a story involving guns, police visits, a mysterious UPS Store mailbox, and a legal system with a “catch-and-release” policy regarding the dangerously mentally ill.

We’ve learned in the last couple of days that the alleged killer was yet another one of those “known wolves” that police were powerless to do anything about. What stands out in this case is what the parents may have done to enable their son.

Before we continue, please understand that I’m not saying the parents did anything in particular to make this young man into a murderer or that they knew he would kill. Parents all have their own blind spots when it comes to our kids.

That’s what makes this a tough column to write. It’s every parent’s darkest fear — the one we try not to talk about: what if it were our kid suspected of mass murder?

CBS Chicago reported Tuesday on two strange incidents but the station hasn’t yet been able to explain either of them.

NOTE: As a matter of personal policy, I won’t use the murderer’s name. Publicity is part of the evil game for mass murderers, and I will not play it. Also, I used “alleged” once and that’s enough.

Police — including SWAT team members — paid a visit to the killer’s parents on Tuesday, where they were confronted outside by a shouting and visibly angry mother. It’s impossible to tell from the WBBM-TV video what she’s saying, but the anger is clear enough.

The report does detail that the mother has a mailbox and a business listing at a local UPS Store close to the scene of the shootings. Police closed the store “until further notice” but have not explained why.

Here’s the full report:

Even more troubling is the killer’s history with police and likely mental illness — and the lengths the father apparently went to both to protect and to arm his son.

Ari Hoffman reported for the Post Millennial that the killer was “able to purchase firearms despite having been flagged as a ‘clear and present danger’ by police in 2019.”

Illinois police said in a statement Tuesday that the flag was a result of threats he made against his own family. He would have been 18 or 19 years old at the time, a legal adult.

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Police took the young man’s knife collection away but then returned them after the father claimed they were his own.

Here’s the rest of the story from Hoffman:

At the time, no arrests were made, and the family was “not willing to move forward on a complaint,” nor did they “provide information on threats of mental health that would have allowed law enforcement to take additional action.” A Firearms Restraining Order was not filed, “nor any order of protection.”

Three months after this incident, the suspect was able to get a Firearm Owners Identification card, sponsored by the suspect’s father, as the suspect was under 21.

If my kid — and they’re always our kids, even after they reach 18 — had made threats against me and the rest of my family, I’d like to think I wouldn’t enable his desire for more knives and guns. But again, I’m trying not to judge because all parents do have their blind spots.

Fox News reported yesterday that the killer’s high school coach called the parents “a problem.”

“I remember the parents more than him because they were kind of a problem,” recalled Jeremy Cahnmann, who ran an afterschool sports program at Lincoln Elementary School. “There wasn’t a lot of love in that family.”

I wasn’t there. I don’t know how much love there was or wasn’t or if Cahnmann knew them well enough to make that kind of judgment. But spotting unhappy families usually isn’t that difficult if you just have your eyes open.

“Every week,” he told Fox, those kids “were the last kids there, and we’d have to call their parents to pick them up.”

A neighbor said to Fox that “There were always police cars at the house. The parents were arguing, fighting all the time.”

I can’t — won’t — tell other people how to raise their kids. And maybe nobody is 100% certain how not to raise a monster.

But from every awful thing I’ve seen on the news these last couple of decades, I’m certain of this much: Hug them, talk to them, be there for them 24/7, even when it’s a pain in the ass, and I’m 99% certain you won’t raise a monster.