WAUKEGAN, IL — The family of Eduardo Uvaldo, one of the seven people fatally shot at the 2022 Highland Park 4th of July parade, and a group of survivors of the shooting filed suit Monday in Lake County court against gunmaker Smith & Wesson, the accused gunman, his father and the firearm retailers who sold him an M&P 15 rifle.
Uvaldo, of Waukegan, immigrated to the United States at the age of 15 in search of a better place to raise a family. He worked every day for 50 years as he and his wife Maria raised four daughters, who in turn raised 13 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, according to the suit.
Always one of the first to arrive at the parade, Uvaldo was shot once in the arm and once in the head, it said. He died two days later at Evanston Hospital and was laid to rest on what would have been his 70th birthday.
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“Eduardo was a kind, loving, hardworking man who adored his family. He was taken too soon: because of the actions of both a disturbed young man and the greedy corporation that made and marketed his weapon,” the Uvaldo family said in a joint statement.
“As we work to honor his memory, part of that is fighting to keep other families from knowing this indescribable pain,” they said. “The shooter may be facing justice, but he could not have acted with that weapon if not for the choices and actions of Smith & Wesson.”
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According to the complaint, filed on behalf of Uvaldo and 18 other paradegoers, including several who were wounded, Massachusetts firearm manufacturer Smith & Wesson, Louisiana firearms distributor and seller Sports South, Kentucky gun shop Bud’s Gun Shop and Lake Villa gun store Red Dot Arms worked in concert with the goal of selling M&P 15 rifles to young people “and/or by giving substantial assistance or encouragement to one another by marketing and selling the M&P 15 to young people.”
The man awaiting trial for the shooting, 23-year-old Bobby Crimo, last month told his court-appointed attorneys that he was ready to plead guilty to murder and attempted murder and spend the rest of his life in state prison rather than take the 117 charges he faces to trial in February.
But when asked if he wished to go forward with the plea at a hearing Wednesday in Waukegan, Crimo told the judge he did not.
Attorney Josh Koskoff, one of the attorneys for the victims and survivors, said Eduardo had sought to build a better life for his future family than he could have done in Mexico.
“And he nailed it. He nailed it as much as anybody could nail the American Dream.” Koskoff said, speaking to reporters outside the hearing with Uvaldo family members.
“Look at the family he raised, look at the legacy he left. And this man, on July 4, was the most patriotic person you would ever find. He wore those flag shorts, you know those flag shorts? And he wasn’t embarrassed about that. He wore them with pride, because this country meant so much to him,” Koskoff said. “And this man who was living the American dream, he died the American nightmare.”
Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, the Connecticut-based law firm that filed the latest case, also represented nine families of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting who secured a $73 million settlement with Remington a decade later, using state law to hold a gunmaker liable for a mass shooting for the first time. The firm also represents 19 families of those who were killed in the 2022 Uvalde, Texas school shooting.
In April, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling against Smith & Wesson’s attempt to get a similar civil suit out of Lake County Circuit Court and into federal courts, where Congress has provided the firearm industry with broad immunity from civil suits.
According to the 30-count, 123-page complaint, Smith & Wesson refused to honor its March 2000 agreement with the federal government acknowledging its responsibility to reduce the criminal misuse of firearms and pledging not to market any guns in a manner that would make them especially appealing to children or criminals.
The powerful gun industry trade groups including the National Rifle Association, or NRA, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, or NSSF, responded to the agreement by organizing a boycott of Smith & Wesson, which was “financially disastrous” for the firearm manufacturer, according to the suit.
The suit alleges Smith & Wesson targeted young people as part of its growth strategy to sell more M&P 15s — the AR-15-style rifle used by the perpetrators of mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado; San Bernardino, California; Parkland, Florida and Poway, California. Authorities say Crimo bought one in February 2020 and used it to fire 83 rounds at paradegoers from a downtown Highland Park rooftop before dropping it as he ran away.
The company’s marketing strategy targeted violence-obsessed young men like Crimo using marketing materials that mirrored the aesthetics of first-person shooter video games such as the Call of Duty series, which he played obsessively, according to the complaint, which noted some of his gameplay statistics and videos he posted.
“Soon, the Shooter would use his M&P 15 in the same manner in real life. He would ‘experience real-life first person shooting with the Smith & Wesson M&P rifle,’ and ‘experience more adrenaline,’ just as Smith & Wesson’s marketing had told him he would,” the complaint said, citing company marketing materials from 2015.
In addition to the Uvaldo family, plaintiffs include Tanya and Fred Castro, Nubia Uvaldo-Hogan and Brian Hogan, Aubrey and Charles Noltemeyer, Guadalupe Miranda, Jose Guzman and Alexander, Eley and Charles Kuchar.
As for the other defendants in the suit, Crimo’s father, who has already pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and served a brief jail sentence, is accused negligently sponsoring his son’s firearm owners identification card application with Illinois State Police, despite knowing of his violent tendencies and untreated mental health issues that contributed to the mass shooting.
Attorneys for the victims and survivors also seek to hold the firearm dealers who sold Crimo the gun and shipped it to him are liable for the shooting.
“While the abhorrent conduct started with Smith and Wesson, it was carried through to completion by a series of other bad actors who contributed to this tragedy,” Matthew Simms, another attorney on the case, said in a statement. “This included firearm dealers Budgsunshop.com, LLC and Red Dot Arms, Inc. – both of which knew they were selling an assault weapon to an individual who was prohibited from acquiring or possessing such a weapon where he lived.”
According to the complaint, the gun shops knew Crimo’s address and therefore “should have recognized that, by initiating his purchase despite these assault weapons bans, the Shooter was demonstrating that he did not care about the law and was willing to use his M&P 15 unlawfully.”
In fact, ordinances in Highland Park and Highwood from the time that Crimo allegedly purchased the murder weapon until the shooting forbade anyone from possessing assault weapons within city limits — but they did not make it illegal to acquire such guns and store them elsewhere, and some Highland Park residents legally did so at the time.
About six months after the shooting, state lawmakers passed the Protect Illinois Communities Act, banning the sale of such guns statewide and requiring those who already owned them to register them with state police or face potential penalties.
The filing of the suit comes just ahead of the two-year statute of limitations, which typically applies to wrongful death and personal injury claims in Illinois.
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