The scene in Highland Park on the 4th of July was unimaginable. Six people are dead and 24 others were injured after a gunman opened fire on a crowd attending the Chicago suburb’s annual Independence Day parade.
On Tuesday morning, 670 The Score hosts Mully & Haugh described their feelings watching coverage of the attack on local television stations.
“It will be a difficult work day for a lot of people in Chicago, in the area, and a lot of people in Highland Park, and a lot of people everywhere because of yesterday,” David Haugh said in opening the show.
Mike Mulligan said he was doing show prep when he got a text to turn his television on. He was struck by a doctor named David Baum, who was at the parade and decided to help victims rather than flee.
Dr. Baum described what he called “battle wounds” on the victims hit by the bullets fired from an automatic weaponed fired by Robert Crimo.
“I think we’ve seen these things happen so often that there’s a kind of numbness that settles in, but the idea that it happened in a Chicago suburb changes that narrative,” Mully said. “The idea that it happens here changes that. Now, people are murdered, people are killed in this city at an astounding rate, at a horrific rate. Every weekend, you can look at a map and see where the shootings were and they’re all over this city, and the gun violence in this city is horrific. But yesterday was the Fourth go July. It was a time where families get out and they celebrate and people are in this suburb in Highland Park and people are having a parade to celebrate America and maybe one of the most American things that can ever happen happens, which is a mass shooting.”
He said Baum’s description reminded him of seeing victims of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 that had suddenly lost limbs.
Mully & Haugh‘s Score colleague Danny Parkins has been critical of people using Chicago’s gun violence to score political points in the past. Haugh remarked that even those people haven’t been so quick to dismiss what happened on Monday as a typical Chicago problem.
“Highland Park is your quintessential American suburb and people find it a little more relatable because it does hit closer to home for a lot of people,” he said. “At 10 o’clock in the morning, you don’t expect to be running for your life from a downtown parade.”
