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(HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.) — The father of the suspected Highland Park, Illinois, mass shooter appeared in virtual bond court in Lake County on Saturday, a day after being charged with seven counts of reckless conduct in connection with the shooting.

Robert Crimo Jr. took a “reckless and unjustified risk” when he signed the Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card for his son to apply for gun ownership, Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said at a news conference Friday. At the time, his son was 19 and could not get a FOID card on his own because was not 21 or over; Those who are 18, 19 or 20 are required to have parent or guardian authorization, Rinehart said.

Under an agreement between the state and Crimo’s defense team, the judge reduced his bond from $500,000 to a $50,000 cash bond. Judge Jacquelyn Melius also ordered Crimo Jr. to surrender his Firearm Owners Identification card, conceal and carry license and any dangerous weapons in his possession within 24 hours of his release. Highland Park police will take possession of those items.

Under his release, Crimo Jr. will have a curfew and cannot have drugs or alcohol or any weapons.

His next court date is set for Jan. 12 at 9 a.m.

“Parents and guardians are in the best position to decide whether their teenagers should have a weapon. They are the first line of defense. In this case, the system failed,” Rinehart said.

Crimo Jr. is facing seven counts of reckless conduct causing great bodily harm.

His son, Robert Crimo III, is accused of killing seven people and injuring dozens of others in the mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb this summer. He pleaded not guilty to charges including murder and attempted murder.

Crimo Jr.’s attorney George M. Gomez said in a statement Friday that the charges were “baseless and unprecedented.”

“This decision should alarm every single parent in the United States of America who according to the Lake County State’s Attorney knows exactly what is going on with their 19 year old adult children and can be held criminally liable for actions taken nearly three years later,” Gomez said in a statement.

The attorney added that his client “continues to sympathize and feel terrible for the individuals and families who were injured and lost loved ones this past July 4th, but these charges are politically motivated and a distraction from the real change that needs to happen in this country.”

Bobby Crimo Jr. told ABC News in July that he was “shocked” by the shooting.

“I had no — not an inkling, warning — that this was going to happen,” he said.

“I filled out the consent form to allow my son to go through the process that the Illinois State Police have in place for an individual to obtain a FOID card,” Crimo told ABC News this summer. “They do background checks. Whatever that entails, I’m not exactly sure. And either you’re approved or denied, and he was approved.”

“Signing a consent form to go through the process…that’s all it was,” Crimo said of his involvement. “Had I purchased guns throughout the years and given them to him in my name, that’s a different story. But he went through that whole process himself.”

Crimo Jr. said his son purchased the weapons with his own money and registered them in his own name.

The Illinois State Police changed its rules for FOID card applications in the wake of the shooting.

ABC News’ Alex Perez and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Two protesters from Tennessee surrendered Friday to face federal charges in New York for routinely harassing women entering a Planned Parenthood clinic on Manhattan’s Bleecker Street.

Bevelyn Beatty Williams, 31, and Edmee Chavannes, 41, violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act with a multiyear campaign to interfere with women who were seeking or providing lawful reproductive care, federal prosecutors said.

The clinic is regularly the scene of abortion-related protests, but Williams and Chavannes used force, threats of force and physical obstruction to impede women from entering the clinic since at least 2019, the indictment said.

“This office will remain committed to ensuring that healthcare facilities, their staff, and those seeking to obtain reproductive health services can continue to do so without unlawful interference,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.

On consecutive days in June 2020 — during the coronavirus pandemic — Williams and Chavannes used force against patients and staff members to keep them from going inside the clinic, the indictment said, quoting from a livestreamed video on Williams’ Facebook page: “This is going to be a wonderful day. We are going to terrorize this place.”

In one instance, Williams pressed her body against the patient entrance door, crushing a staff member’s hand. In another instance, Chavannes forced a woman against a metal barricade and screamed in her face, according to the indictment.

The two appeared briefly in Tennessee before they are transferred to New York for prosecution.

They are each charged with conspiracy to violate the FACE Act, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Williams faces an additional charge of violating the FACE Act through force, which carries up to 10 years.

The two protesters were named in a civil lawsuit filed in February 2021 by New York Attorney General Letitia James. James announced in April 2021 that her office had come to an agreement with the two women to stay outside the buffer zone or pay a $5,000 fine if they broke the agreement.

Prosecutors said the two have sought to harass women at reproductive health care clinics in Atlanta, where they stood inside the vestibule and yelled threatening comments at patients; Brooklyn, New York; and Fort Myers, Florida. Chavannes and Williams were also arrested for trespassing at a Planned Parenthood during an anti-abortion protest in Nashville, Tennessee, in July.

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(NEW YORK) — Brittney Griner thanked her family and friends and credited her faith for surviving her time in custody on Friday in her first comments since being released from a Russian prison earlier this month.

“It feels so good to be home! The last 10 months have been a battle at every turn,” Griner wrote on Instagram. “I dug deep to keep my faith and it was the love from so many of you that helped keep me going. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone for your help.”

The U.S. swapped the WNBA star for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout on Dec. 8.

Griner was taken into custody at a Moscow area airport in February in possession of vaping cartridges containing hashish oil, an illegal substance in Russia. She pleaded guilty in July and was sentenced to nine years in prison on Aug. 7. She appealed the sentence, but was quickly rejected in October.

The U.S. had been negotiating a prisoner swap for months. President Joe Biden finally announced on Dec. 8 that he had spoken to Griner from a plane as she flew back to the United States and shared photos of himself with Griner’s wife, Cherelle, and Vice President Kamala Harris in the Oval Office.

Griner also specifically thanked Biden and urged the U.S. to continue to fight to bring imprisoned ex-Marine Paul Whelan home from Russia.

“President Biden, you brought me home and I know you are committed to bringing Paul Whelan and all Americans home too,” she wrote. “I will use my platform to do whatever I can to help you. I also encourage everyone that played a part in bringing me home to continue their efforts to bring all Americans home. Every family deserves to be whole.”

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(WASHINGTON) — A follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement who led members of the pro-Trump mob that chased Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman during the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced Friday to five years in prison following his conviction of multiple felony and misdemeanor offenses for his actions during the riot.

Doug Jensen, 43, became one of the more recognizable figures in early pictures that emerged from the Capitol assault and was one of the first rioters to breach the building after scaling a 20-foot wall on the West Front of the complex.

Prosecutors had sought 64 months for Jensen, describing him as a leader who “was trying to fire up a revolution” that day.

Judge Tim Kelly went slightly below their recommendation in sentencing Jensen to 60 months, expressing concern at Jensen’s failure to express any remorse for his actions, including in a short statement he delivered just prior to the sentence being handed down. Jensen made no apology and said he just wanted to move forward and get back to his old life.

Kelly credited Goodman’s heroism as he detailed the rationale behind the sentence, noting if he hadn’t been able to divert the mob away from the U.S. Senate the consequences could have been dire.

“It is a miracle that more people were not injured and did not lose their lives that day,” Kelly said.

In their sentencing memo, prosecutors described Jensen as a “ringleader” during the attack who later expressed pride in becoming a “poster boy” of Jan. 6.

A jury convicted Jensen in September of five felony offenses including assaulting a law enforcement officer and obstructing an official proceeding, after a trial which featured testimony from Officer Goodman himself.

Goodman described the harrowing moment he was chased by Jensen and other rioters up a stairwell inside the Capitol where he managed to divert them away from the Senate Chamber and into the Ohio Clock Corridor where other officers joined him to provide backup.

Capitol Police Inspector Thomas Lloyd said in a new letter to Judge Kelly this week that the quick thinking by Goodman likely prevented a shootout inside the Capitol to prevent rioters from reaching Senators who were at the time sheltering in place.

“Thankfully, the Defendant was able to walk out of the Capitol Building on January 6. He can thank Officer Goodman,” Lloyd said. “If Officer Goodman had not led the Defendant and the rest of the mob away from the Senate Lobby and an attempt was made to breach those doors, there would have been tremendous bloodshed.”

Even after Goodman was joined by his fellow officers, Jensen continued to confront them — demanding they “back up” and arrest Vice President Mike Pence. Prosecutors later revealed he had been carrying a knife in his pocket with a three-inch blade.

After the riot, when Jensen was first interviewed by the FBI, he was asked by agents if he regretted his actions and told them “it would have been worth it” if former President Trump was able to stay in power as a result of the attack, prosecutors say.

And while his attorneys said leading up to his trial that he was reformed and no longer believed in the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, he was later caught using an unauthorized cell phone to stream Mike Lindell’s so-called “Cyber Symposium” that propagated more conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen.

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(DALLAS) — A jury has begun the sentencing phase Friday for former police officer Aaron Dean, one day after he was found guilty of manslaughter in the death of Atatiana Jefferson.

The same jury decided to convict Dean on Thursday for manslaughter as opposed to a harsher murder charge during roughly 13 hours of deliberations. Manslaughter is a second-degree felony, according to the Texas penal code. It’s punishable by two to 20 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.

Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, was fatally shot by Dean, a white police officer, in her Fort Worth, Texas, home on Oct. 12, 2019.

Dean and another officer responded to a nonemergency call to check on Jefferson’s home around 2:30 a.m. because a door was left open to the house.

Dean did not park near the home, knock at the door or announce police presence at any time while on the scene, according to body camera footage and Dean’s testimony.

Dean testified that he suspected a burglary was in progress due to the messiness inside the home when he peered through an open door. When Dean entered the backyard, body camera footage showed Dean looking into one of the windows of the home.

Jefferson and her young nephew Zion were playing video games when they heard a noise, according to Zion’s testimony. Zion said his aunt had left the door open because they burned hamburgers earlier in the night and were airing out the smoke.

Jefferson grabbed her gun from her purse before approaching the window, Zion testified. Police officials have said Jefferson was within her rights to protect herself.

Dean’s lawyers argued during the trial that he was confronted by deadly force when he saw Jefferson with the gun and was within his right to respond with deadly force. However, Dean admitted on the stand that his actions constituted “bad police work.”

In body camera footage, Dean can be heard shouting, “Put your hands up, show me your hands,” and firing one shot through the window, killing Jefferson. According to a forensics video expert, there was half a second between his commands and when he shot Jefferson.

Dean resigned from the police department before his arrest. Fort Worth Chief of Police Ed Kraus has said Dean was about to be fired for allegedly violating multiple department policies.

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(WASHINGTON) — A follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement who led members of the pro-Trump mob that chased Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman during the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol is set to be sentenced Friday following his conviction of multiple felony and misdemeanor offenses for his actions during the riot.

Doug Jensen, 43, became one of the more recognizable figures in early pictures that emerged from the Capitol assault and was one of the first rioters to breach the building after scaling a 20-foot wall on the West Front of the complex.

In their sentencing memo requesting Judge Timothy Kelly sentence Jensen to more than five years in prison, prosecutors describe Jensen as a “ringleader” during the attack who later expressed pride in becoming a “poster boy” of Jan. 6.

A jury convicted Jensen in September of five felony offenses including assaulting a law enforcement officer and obstructing an official proceeding, after a trial which featured testimony from Officer Goodman himself.

Goodman described the harrowing moment he was chased by Jensen and other rioters up a stairwell inside the Capitol where he managed to divert them away from the Senate Chamber and into the Ohio Clock Corridor where other officers joined him to provide backup.

Capitol Police Inspector Thomas Lloyd said in a new letter to Judge Kelly this week that the quick thinking by Goodman likely prevented a shootout inside the Capitol to prevent rioters from reaching Senators who were at the time sheltering in place.

“Thankfully, the Defendant was able to walk out of the Capitol Building on January 6. He can thank Officer Goodman,” Lloyd said. “If Officer Goodman had not led the Defendant and the rest of the mob away from the Senate Lobby and an attempt was made to breach those doors, there would have been tremendous bloodshed.”

Even after Goodman was joined by his fellow officers, Jensen continued to confront them — demanding they “back up” and arrest Vice President Mike Pence. Prosecutors later revealed he had been carrying a knife in his pocket with a three-inch blade.

After the riot, when Jensen was first interviewed by the FBI, he was asked by agents if he regretted his actions and told them “it would have been worth it” if former President Trump was able to stay in power as a result of the attack, prosecutors say.

And while his attorneys said leading up to his trial that he was reformed and no longer believed in the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, he was later caught using an unauthorized cell phone to stream Mike Lindell’s so-called “Cyber Symposium” that propagated more conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen.

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(NEW YORK) — A Nor’easter is pummeling millions in the Northeast with snow, ice and rain as a major storm continues to sweep its way across the country.

This storm started in the west and the south, with 58 reported tornadoes slamming Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida.

In the north, up to 4 feet of snow fell in western South Dakota, while up to 30 inches slammed Duluth, Minnesota. Blizzard warnings are ongoing for Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana.

Part of that massive storm has redeveloped into a Nor’easter that’s pounding the Northeast.

A winter storm warning is in effect from Pennsylvania to Maine. Almost 10 inches of snow fell so far in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains while up to 4.2 inches snow hit Syracuse, New York.

Freezing rain is coating roads from Virginia to Pennsylvania.

Heavy rain and powerful winds up to 50 mph are slamming the coast from New York City to Boston.

This storm moves out of the Northeast Friday night. But with gusty, chilly winds behind the storm, up to 3 feet of lake effect snow is expected near Buffalo, New York, this weekend.

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(NEW YORK) — Americans are gearing up to hit the roads and the skies for the holidays — and airlines are bracing for a packed travel season.

Here’s what you need to know before hitting the road or heading to the airport:

Best, worst days to drive

Nearly 102 million Americans — 90.4% of travelers — will drive to their holiday destinations, according to AAA.

The worst days to be on the road are Dec. 23, Dec. 27, Dec. 28 and Jan. 2, according to transportation analytics company INRIX.

But if those are your planned travel days, the best times for motorists are 2 p.m. or earlier and after 8 p.m. The best times on Jan. 2 are before 3 p.m. or after 8 p.m., INRIX said.

The best days to drive are Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, according to INRIX.

Based on average ticket prices, the most expensive day to leave town for Christmas is Thursday, Dec. 22, followed by Saturday, Dec. 17, and Friday, Dec. 23, according to Expedia.

The cheapest day to fly before Christmas is Dec. 19.

When planning your return trip, avoid flying back on Mon. Dec. 26. Instead, book for Dec. 27 or Dec. 28, according to Expedia.

Looking for the ultimate budget-friendly day? Book a flight for New Year’s Eve, according to Expedia, when ticket prices are more than $200 cheaper than average for the holiday period (Dec. 17 to Jan. 1).

Jan. 2 will be United’s busiest day

United is planning for more than 8.3 million travelers over the holidays — about 1.9 million more than last year.

But thanks to remote work, United said the holiday travel period is getting longer and demand is less concentrated on peak days.

Jan. 2 will likely be United’s busiest day, when more than 480,000 travelers are expected. The airline said it anticipates setting a new post-pandemic travel record.

Chicago O’Hare will be United’s busiest hub, followed by Denver, Newark and Houston, according to the airline.

Dec. 22, Dec. 23 and Dec. 27 peak days for Delta

Delta said it expects about 9 million customers from Dec. 16 to Jan. 3 — just shy of its 2019 numbers, when the airline had about 9.3 million customers.

Delta’s largest hub, Atlanta, will have more than 800 daily flights on average.

Delta forecasts its peak travel days to be Thursday, Dec. 22, Friday, Dec. 23, and Tuesday, Dec. 27.

Dec. 22 is American’s biggest day

American Airlines predicts to see more than 10 million passengers from Dec. 16 to Jan. 2.

American said its busiest day is Dec. 22 with 5,520 departures, followed by Dec. 15 with 5,514 departures.

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(NEW YORK) — More than 30 years after allegedly fatally stabbing a man during a fight in Massachusetts, the primary suspect was captured by law enforcement over 3,000 miles away at a shrimp farm in Guatemala.

Mario R. Garcia has been wanted for the Nov. 16, 1991, homicide of Ismael Recinos-Garcia, according to the Massachusetts State Police. The two had gotten into a fight in Attleboro, Massachusetts, during which Recinos-Garcia was fatally stabbed. Garcia subsequently evaded police detection for over 30 years, earning a spot on the Massachusetts State Police Most Wanted List in 2021.

Garcia’s most wanted poster noted that he has ties to Connecticut, Utah, and Georgia, as well as being a native of Guatemala. He was wanted for not only the murder of Recinos-Garcia but also for an unrelated charge of assault and battery in Attleboro, according to authorities.

Massachusetts State Police touted a multi-agency investigation “that spanned more than 30 years and two continents,” which finally resulted in the capture of the 50-year-old Garcia — who was 19 at the time of the alleged homicide — in a press release published on Wednesday,

The press release credited Detective Lieutenant Curtis Cinelli with tracking Garcia to a shrimp farm in Guatemala where he was arrested. Cinelli was originally a case officer for the State Police Violent Fugitive Apprehension Section in 2014 when he first began tracking Garcia to Guatemala.

Despite now being in a different unit, Cinelli developed new information earlier this year that indicated Garcia was working on a shrimp farm in Iztapa, Guatemala. That information was then used by the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Department of State to locate and apprehend Garcia, according to the release.

“Garcia attempted to evade capture by jumping into a body of water at the shrimp farm but was apprehended and placed into custody,” according to the Massachusetts State Police,

U.S. and Guatemalan authorities are now working on extraditing Garcia so that he may eventually face prosecution in Bristol County, Massachusetts.

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(MEDFORD, Ore.) — A day after Alejandra, which is not her real name, arrived for a job harvesting marijuana at a farm near Medford, Oregon, she says things took a harrowing turn when armed guards prevented workers from leaving.

“Holding a gun, one of them said, ‘No one goes out. No one goes out until you’re done trimming the pot. No one goes out and no one comes in,’” the undocumented mother of three told ABC News.

“You feel horrible. You feel humiliated, trampled on. You feel like dying,” Alejandra said.

Pot was legalized for recreational use in Oregon in 2015. The goal was to generate tax revenue for the state while curbing the black market. But years later, foreign drug cartels have taken advantage of the limited oversight by running illegal farms on the backs of exploited migrant workers, officials told ABC News.

On these unlicensed farms in southern Oregon, estimated to be in the thousands, workers like Alejandra are often forced to live and work in deplorable conditions as they tend to the crops.

“We were prisoners, because we couldn’t go out. We worked very long hours, sometimes until 2 or 3 in the morning. They were constantly pushing us to work faster, to trim the pot,” Alejandra said.

The work was supposed to take 15 days, but ended up lasting an entire month, Alejandra said. “I feared for my life, because [the guards] would act really crazy. I kept thinking about my kids, my mother. Wishing I could see them again. That’s all I could think about.”

Over the past year, ABC News has been tracking the underbelly of marijuana legalization in southern Oregon, where federal, state and local law enforcement are working together to combat the growing problem of “narco slavery.” The three-part investigation, “THC: The Human Cost,” is airing this week on “ABC News Live.”

Special Agent-in-Charge Robert Hammer leads the initiative to root out Oregon’s illegal pot farms for Homeland Security Investigations’ Pacific Northwest Office. Last August, the news of a dying man left at a gas station set off alarm bells for Hammer and his team.

“We were able to track that [person] back as a worker on one of the farms,” Hammer said.

“We’re not trying to look at it as, ‘Oh, this is just another marijuana operation.’ We’re really trying to focus on the fact that this is the exploitation of people. This is the destruction of the environment through illegal pesticides,” Hammer said.

“The marijuana black market is out of control in the United States and threatens the integrity of the already struggling regulated cannabis industry,” said Terry Neeley, founder and managing director of West Coast AML Services, which creates risk management programs for financial institutions to safely bank marijuana-related businesses. “This crime of human slavery is not unique to the U.S. Narco slavery will spread around the world like a cancer as other countries legalize marijuana. Tough drug laws need to be in place at the state level and aggressively enforced to curb the narco-slave epidemic,” he said.

ABC News embedded with HSI on a joint raid with local authorities in October. On a property about 20 miles outside of Medford, agents found 17 workers and a 2-year-old toddler.

A total of three neighboring properties were also raided. At one site, law enforcement says they counted a little over a hundred illegal greenhouses, more than 8,500 black market marijuana plants and 7,000 pounds of processed illegal cannabis.

After each raid, authorities bulldoze and demolish the grow site in order to keep the illegal farms from resurfacing. A nongovernmental organization called Unete steps in to make sure workers, who are mostly undocumented, have access to food and shelter.

Many workers arrive to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America desperate for work, Unete co-director Kathy Keese told ABC News. Keese said the workers’ vulnerability makes them easy targets for human trafficking and exploitation by the cartels.

“You can’t talk about it, because you don’t know who you can be talking to, and they might seek retaliation with your family. So it’s better to stay silent,” said Maria, which is not her real name. She also worked on a cartel-run pot farm in Oregon.

Both Alejandra and Maria asked for their real names not to be used, because they fear retaliation from the cartels.

Maria said she heard about the job through someone who called themselves a contractor. She was told they paid well, and they didn’t check her immigration status.

“They told us, it’s like you were going to harvest grapes – you’ll come and go. But when we got there, it wasn’t like that,” Maria said.

Like Alejandra, once Maria began working on the farm, armed guards prevented her from leaving until the harvest was over. She said there were no bathrooms or beds for the more than 200 workers there. She slept on the floor or on an air mattress.

In the summer heat, she and others were forced to work from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., Maria said. The guards would determine when they would wake up, eat and sleep.

When police raided the farm, Maria said she ran into the mountains and hid for 12 hours because she feared she would be thrown in jail or deported. When she returned to the camp, everything — and everyone — was gone.

Last year, Oregon lawmakers agreed the problem with illegal pot farms is out of control, recognizing the cartels had infiltrated the industry and migrants were being trafficked to work the fields.

But help can’t come fast enough.

Currently, 21 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Some advocates say it needs to be decriminalized nationally to prevent cartels from smuggling cannabis to buyers in states where it’s still illegal.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., blames the problem on “dysfunctional federal policy.”

“The states have been forced to step up and do it themselves. People who try to play by the rules are dramatically disadvantaged. They face higher costs. There’s no effective regulation for the people who cheat. In fact, the incentives are for the black market,” Blumenauer told ABC News.

Meanwhile, officers in Oregon are hoping to combat labor exploitation by creating more incentives for farm workers to come forward.

“The law is very clear. If you’re a victim of human trafficking, the law is on your side. There are various protections that can be put in place in order to mitigate any type of immigration concern that victims would have,” Hammer said.

Alejandra and Maria both said they never got paid for their work. The contractors vanished, leaving the women with nothing but bad memories and the fear it will happen again.

“A lot of people have gone through the same, and even worse; they are no longer with us to tell their stories,” Alejandra said.

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