HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. – A GoFundMe account created to help a boy orphaned by the deadly parade shooting in Chicago on the Fourth of July has collected more than $2 million.
Aiden McCarthy’s photo was shared across Chicago-area social media groups in the hours after the July 4 parade shooting in Highland Park, accompanied by pleas to help identify the 2-year-old who had been found at the scene bloodied and alone and to reunite him with his family.
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On Tuesday, friends and authorities confirmed that the boy’s parents, Kevin McCarthy, 37, and Irina McCarthy, 35, were among seven people killed in the tragedy.
“At two years old, Aiden is left in the unthinkable position; to grow up without his parents,” wrote Irina Colon on a GoFundMe account she created for the family and Aiden, who was reunited with his grandparents Monday evening.
Friends of the McCarthys said Irina’s parents would care for the boy going forward.
Robert E. Crimo III was charged with seven counts of murder Tuesday in the shooting that sent hundreds of marchers, parents and children fleeing in fear and set off an hourslong manhunt in and around Highland Park, an affluent Chicago suburb on the shores of Lake Michigan. Investigators have yet to identify a motive.