Robert "Bobby" E. Crimo III / Awake the Rapper

About

Robert "Bobby" E. Crimo III, born September 20th, 2000, is the primary suspect and shooter involved in the 2022 Highland Park Parade Shooting that happened outside Chicago, Illinois on July 4th, 2022. After killing six people, Crimo was arrested and images and stories emerged about his background that highlighted his alleged devotion to Donald Trump, MAGA and the alt-right. Details about his SoundCloud and Spotify where he made and shared rap music under the name Awake the Rapper also emerged after the shooting. Memes and discourse about Crimo surfaced on Twitter and 4chan, among other platforms, and used pictures of him dressed as Where's Waldo or sporting pigtails.

Online History

"Awake the Rapper" Hip-Hop and Music Videos

Before Crimo was arrested in mid-2022, he was a YouTuber and a rapper who uploaded under the pseudonym Awake or Awake the Rapper. Since July 4th, 2022, all of Crimo's social media pages have been suspended, however, according to a YouTube Wiki Fandom^[1] page about Awake, he started posting content in 2011.

In 2016, he allegedly went viral for the first time for a song titled "By The Pond" featuring atlas.^[1] A year later, he uploaded the music video for the song. According to the Fandom^[1] page, the track earned over 3 million streams across all platforms where it was posted before being deleted.

Crimo continued to post on his Awake YouTube channel going into 2022 where many of his videos and songs earned upwards of 5,000 views. This is evident in an archive.today^[2] screenshot taken of his channel on July 4th, 2022. Some of Crimo’s music videos depicted mass shootings with characters being shot by police. His music was also available on Spotify but was removed on July 5th, 2022.

2022 Highland Park Shooting

On the morning of July 4th, 2022, around 10:15 a.m. in Highland Park, Illinois the shooting began when Robert Crimo started firing a rifle from the rooftop of a nearby building overlooking the street where the parade was underway.^[3] Initially, witnesses at the event reported at least five people were lying on the ground injured with over 70 shots fired.

Reporters and news teams on the scene captured the moment as gunfire began, showing attendees fleeing and screaming. One such video was captured by Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet on July 4th and posted to her Twitter^[4] account around noon that day, accumulating over 2 million views in 24 hours (shown below). In the hours following the shooting, additional videos and photos of the scene were posted on social media by attendees.

My video.. I was at #Highland Park parade.. Terrified people fleeing July 4th parade when shooting started. pic.twitter.com/DSe0NJOuem

— Lynn Sweet (@lynnsweet) July 4, 2022

Crimo fled the scene of the shooting dressed as a woman and was found by law enforcement roughly nine hours later according to CBS News.^[6] He was then identified as Robert Eugene Crimo III.

Additional details about Crimo’s online behavior and activity came to light following his arrest, including that he frequently visited online messageboards that discussed depictions of death and posted a video of a beheading days before the shooting according to CNN.^[7] Crimo also allegedly had his own Discord server that was raided by 4chan users after the shooting but has since been shut down according to Yahoo! News.^[8]

BREAKING: Authorities update on Highland Park mass shooting investigation:

- Person of interest believed to have planned attack for weeks
- Rifle appears to have been purchased legally in Illinois
- No indication of involvement of others

MORE: https://t.co/tVpbKH6zpc pic.twitter.com/BQnAzuLjh3

— ABC News (@ABC) July 5, 2022

Appearance and Viral Images

Crimo has multiple face tattoos like the number "47" next to his right eye and the word "Awake" above his left eye. He has short brown hair and dark, brown eyes and is said to be of Italian descent.

After he was identified as the shooter and before his Twitter account was suspended, many people surfaced images of him from there. A screenshot of his Twitter account was taken on July 4th via archive.today.^[9] Some of the primary photos taken from his Twitter featured Crimo wearing an FBI baseball cap, hanging out on a fishing boat and wearing a Trump 2024 flag like a cape. All of these photos were posted to Twitter from June 18th to June 27th, 2022 (shown below). Robert Crimo also had another Twitter^[10] account called @robertcrimo with additional photos.

Many photographs were also surfaced from his two Instagram accounts after the July 2022 shooting. One featured him sporting pigtails while another showed him wearing a Sad Boys x Pepe the Frog shirt (shown below, left and center). Also, a photo showed him wearing a Where's Waldo costume at Trump's Stop the Steal rally (shown below, right). Via a screenshot from Twitter^[11] user lesliemack, Crimo had roughly 5,400 followers on Instagram on July 4th, 2022, before being suspended.

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References