What we know about the victims of the Highland Park shooting

A grandfather who used a wheelchair seated with his family in a prime viewing location. A 63-year-old woman who was her synagogue’s contact person for special events. A beloved uncle who still went to work every day, even in his late 80s.

Still reeling from the violent attack at a July 4 celebration, families and friends of the seven protesters killed in Highland Park, Illinois, began sharing details of the victims of another shooting on Tuesday. American mass.

More than 30 people were also injured, including four members of the same family.

Police said the victims, attacked by a gunman firing from a rooftop, ranged from octogenarians to children as young as 8 years old. All six people who died Monday were adults, said Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. A seventh person died on Tuesday, he said.

Law enforcement has yet to release the names of the victims. Here’s what we know about some of those who died, based on interviews:

Nicolas Toledo, 76 years old

Nicolas Toledo didn’t want to attend the Highland Park July 4 parade, but his disability meant he had to be around someone full-time. And the family wasn’t going to skip the parade — even going so far as to position chairs for a prime viewing spot at midnight the night before.

Mr. Toledo was sitting in his wheelchair along the parade route, between his son and a nephew, when the bullets started flying. “We realized our grandfather had been hit,” said Xochil Toledo, his granddaughter. “We saw blood and it all splattered on us.”

Mr. Toledo suffered three gunshot wounds, killing him. He had returned to Highland Park a few months ago from Mexico at the request of his family members. He had been hit by a car while strolling through Highland Park a few years ago during an earlier stay with his family and suffered a series of medical problems resulting from that accident.

“We brought him here so he could have a better life,” Ms Toledo said. “His sons wanted to take care of him and be more in his life, and then this tragedy happened.”

A smile and a hug. It was guaranteed every time Jacki Sundheim walked into Marlena Jayatilake’s spice shop in downtown Highland Park, Illinois.

“He was such a beautiful human being, a beautiful ray of light,” Jayatilake said. “So it’s definitely a dark day.”

Sundheim, a member of North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Ill., was among those killed in Highland Park, according to the synagogue.

Sundheim worked at the synagogue to coordinate events and do a bit of everything else. Janet Grable, a friend, said she went above and beyond by planning bar mitzvahs for her two children and arranging special seating for her mother when she joined services in town.

Steve Straus, 88

A father of two, grandfather of four and a financial adviser who, at 88, still took the train every day from his Highland Park home to his office at a brokerage firm in Chicago, Steve Straus “wouldn’t have shouldn’t have died that way,” his niece, Cynthia Straus, said in a phone interview.

“He was an honorable man who worked his whole life and took care of his family and gave everyone their best,” Ms Straus said. “He was kind and gentle and had enormous intelligence, humor and wit.”

He was devoted to his wife, she said, and intensely close to his brother, and extremely health conscious: “He exercised like he was 50.”

And, she added, he should have been better protected.

“There’s kind of a mentality that this stuff doesn’t affect us,” she said. “And nobody can think that way right now – we are in an internal war in this country. This country is turning on itself. And innocent people are dying.

Eduardo Medina contributed report.