Billionaire Bill Ackman donated $18,000 to toddler orphaned in Highland Park shooting: Grandparents say his father ‘shielded him from bullets with his body’
- Bill Ackman donated $18K to a GoFundMe for 2-year-old orphan Aiden McCarthy
- The billionaire is the largest donor to the crowdfunding account
- Aiden lost both of his parents in the Highland Park parade shooting on Monday
- He escaped death after his dad shielded him with his own body
- Aiden has been placed in the care of his grandparents
- The GoFundMe supporting his family has raised more than $2.5M
Billionaire Bill Ackman donated $18,000 to a fundraiser supporting the family of a two-year-old boy orphaned in the Highland Park parade shooting.
Aiden McCarthy, 2, survived the hail of bullets Monday after his father, Kevin McCarthy, shielded him with his own body.
Kevin and his wife, Irina McCarthy, were both among the seven people killed when a gunman opened fire on a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, an affluent Chicago suburb, with an AR-15-style weapon.
The crowdfunding page was established to help Aiden’s grandparents with ‘raising, caring for and supporting’ him and has already raised over $2.5 million.
Confessed shooter Robert Crimo, 21, has been charged with seven counts of first-degree murder.
Lake County State Attorney Eric Rinehart said Tuesday that ‘dozens’ more charges would follow and he hopes to send Crimo to prison for life.
Billionaire Bill Ackman (left) donated $18,000 to a GoFundMe account supporting the family of Aiden McCarthy (right). Aiden was orphaned in the Highland Park parade shooting
More than 46,000 people have donated to the GoFundMe account established in Aiden’s honor, including investor and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.
The billionaire is the largest donor to date after making an $18,000 contribution to the fund. His office confirmed the donation to The Daily Beast on Tuesday.
The largest donation in the last few hours was a $10,000 contribution from an anonymous source. Most of the other high contributors are also anonymous.
‘At two years old, Aiden is left in the unthinkable position; to grow up without his parents,’ GoFundMe organizer, Irina Colon, wrote on the page.
‘Aiden will be cared for by his loving family and he will have a long road ahead to heal, find stability, and ultimately navigate life as an orphan.
‘He is surrounded by a community of friends and extended family that will embrace him with love, and any means available to ensure he has everything he needs as he grows.’
The crowdfunding page was established to help Aiden’s grandparents with ‘raising, caring for and supporting’ him and has already raised over $2.5 million
Aiden McCarthy, 2, (pictured) survived the hail of bullets Monday after his father, Kevin McCarthy, shielded him with his own body
Aiden lost his mother, Irina, 35, and father, Kevin, 37, after being separated from them during the chaos of Monday’s shooting.
He was kept safe by complete strangers after Lauren Silva, 38, of Deerfield, and her boyfriend found him during the chaos.
Silva told The Daily Beast they emerged from a parking garage a few blocks away from the shooting just as the violence began to unfold.
‘We were just opening the door to walk up the stairs and we heard it…boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,’ she told the Beast. ‘And it sounded like someone was, like, pounding on the glass doors.’
Silva and her boyfriend and his son began running toward those who were injured when her boyfriend suddenly thrusted the little boy into her arms.
‘My boyfriend handed me this little boy and said he was underneath this father who was shot in the leg,’ she said. ‘They were trying to stop the bleeding so I brought the boy downstairs into the garage.’
Aiden McCarthy (pictured with an unknown man) has since been placed in the care of his grandparents
Aiden lost his mother, Irina, 35, and father, Kevin, 37, after being separated from them during the chaos of Monday’s shooting
https://youtube.com/watch?v=V4-xh_wvxNs%3Frel%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26hl%3Den-US
Once inside the garage, she managed to clean out his scrapes and washed the blood off him. She said he was wearing one shoe and his sock was covered in blood.
‘He kept asking if mom and dad are going to come back soon,’ she said.
Silva reemerged from the parking garage after 20 minutes to see how the father was doing. She handed Aiden off to a family she was hunkering down in the garage with, who took him to the hospital and later handed him to police. He was eventually reunited with his grandparents.
Dana Ruder Ring, who had taken care of the child until 8 p.m., according to Fox 32 Chicago, posted the original photo of the boy to help identify him.
Silva, a mother of two, said she’s holding on to the memory of the ‘kid’s face and his touch and the sound of his voice.’
‘I feel like I want to hold on to, like, a little bit of emotion that I feel—which is telling that boy that his dad was going to come back,’ she said.
The gunman opened fire at 10:14 a.m. on Monday, barely 15 minutes into the parade. He then fled the scene and hid throughout the day before eventually being arrested at 6:30 p.m. in Lake Forrest, eight miles north of where the massacre unfolded
Horror on Independence Day: A police officer bows his head in grief next to abandoned strollers and chairs after a shooting that killed seven people in Highland Park
Tributes to the seven people who died in the massacre were left along the parade route
The gunman, Robert ‘Bobby’ Crimo began shooting with an AR-15-style weapon shortly after 10 a.m., from a rooftop along the parade route.
Police said Tuesday that Crimo dressed as a woman to disguise himself and easily slipped into the crowd of panicked bystanders, evading law enforcement.
Highland Park parade shooter Robert ‘Bobby’ Crimo, 21, been charged with seven counts of first-degree murder
He was eventually arrested about eight hours after the shooting.
Crimo has since confessed to the fatal attack that took seven lives and left dozens injured. He was hit with seven counts of first-degree murder and will likely face additional charges.
‘He went into details about what he had done. He admitted to what he had done,’ Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart told reporters Wednesday, NBC News reported. ‘We don’t want to speculate on motives right now.’
After fleeing the shooting scene in Highland Park, Crimo reportedly drove to nearby Madison, Wisconsin, where he ‘seriously contemplated’ carrying out another attack, police spokesman Christopher Covelli said.
‘We don’t have information to suggest that he planned on driving to Madison, initially, to commit another attack,’ Covelli said. ‘We do believe that he was driving around [after] the first attack and saw the celebration.’
He added: ‘Indications are that he hadn’t put enough thought or research into that.’
Crimo has been jailed without bond.
Death toll in Highland Park July Fourth shooting rises to seven
The number of people who have died in the Highland Park Fourth of July massacre has risen to seven, as of Wednesday morning.
The victims include Stephen Straus, 88; Katherine Goldstein, 64; Jacki Sundheim, 63; Nicholas Toledo Zaragoza, 78; Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, and husband and wife Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37.
On Wednesday, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office revealed that the seventh victim, Uvaldo, died at Evanston Hospital around 8am. The number of injured now stands at 46, and they range in age from 8 to 85 years old.
Robert Crimo, 21, appeared in Lake County court on Wednesday morning after being charged with seven counts of first-degree murder. He is expected to face a slew of other charges, and is being held without bail.
Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart told the court that Crimo carried out a ‘calculated and premeditated attack’. He said Crimo confessed to standing on a roof above the parade route, and took aim at people standing across the street, reloading his Smith & Wesson AR-15 rifle three times.
Police recovered 83 spent casings from the roof.
Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37, were both killed in the massacre. Their two-year-old son, Aiden, was pulled from underneath his father’s body
Nicolas Toledo, 76, had not wanted to attend the July 4 parade in Highland Park, Ill., on Monday, his granddaughter because he was in a wheelchair
Irina and Kevin McCarthy, 35 and 37, were the parents of a two-year-old boy, Aiden, who is now orphaned. He was pulled from underneath his father’s body and taken care of by paradegoers.
Nicolas Toledo, 76 was the first victim to be identified. He was a grandfather visiting his family from Mexico. His family said he was shot in the head as he sat in his wheelchair, his blood splattering on them.
Toledo had not wanted to attend the parade, his granddaughter told the New York Times. But because of his disabilities that restricted him to a wheelchair, and his family’s insistence of going, he obliged.
Another victim, Jacki Sundheim was a longtime teacher at the North Shore Congregation Israel synagogue. She is survived by her husband Bruce and daughter Leah, the Times of Israel reported.
‘There are no words sufficient to express the depth of our grief for Jacki’s death,’ the synagogue said in a statement.
Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, who was in hospital with a gunshot wound to the arm and back of the head, died on Wednesday. His wife, Maria, was hit in the head by fragments, and his grandson received a gunshot wound to the arm but is stable.
On Wednesday, Katherine Goldstein’s daughter Cassie described how her mother was shot in the chest and fell down dead in front of her.
‘He shot her in the chest, and she fell down. And I knew she was dead,’ Cassie told NBC Nightly News. ‘So I just told her that I loved her, but I couldn’t stop because he was still shooting everyone next to me.’
Katherine Goldstein, pictured left, was among the people killed in the Highland Park parade mass shooting on July 4
Steve Straus, 88, (left) was among the seven people who were killed during the Highland Park Fourth of July parade massacre. Eduardo Uvaldo, 65, (right) died on Wednesday. Family said he had been shot in the arm and back of the head
A local doctor who rushed into the carnage described the shooting victims as being ‘blown up’ by the attacker’s high-powered weapon.
Dr. David Baum, a long-time obstetrician in Highland Park, was attending the parade with his wife and children to watch his two-year-old grandson participate. When the shots rang out and others fled, he ran into the fray to try to help the victims.
In an interview with CNN, Baum described seeing victims with ‘wartime’ and ‘unspeakable’ injuries.
‘The people who were gone were blown up by that gunfire,’ Baum said. ‘The horrific scene of some of those bodies is unspeakable for the average person.’
‘Having been a physician, I’ve seen things in ERs, you know, you do see lots of blood. But the bodies were literally – some of the bodies – there was an evisceration injury from the power of this gun and the bullets.’
‘There was another person who had an unspeakable head injury. Unspeakable,’ he said told CNN.
‘And the injuries that I saw – I never served – but those are wartime injuries. Those are what are seen in victims of war, not victims at a parade,’ Baum said.
Baum said there were at least three doctors, a nurse, and a nurse practitioner who joined him in treating victims. He recalled paramedics covering up victims who they knew were dead at the scene.
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