CHICAGO — Toddler Aiden McCarthy was found wandering alone in the chaotic aftermath of Monday’s mass shooting in Highland Park as strangers sought to reunite him with his family.
A woman — stunned and speechless in the chaos of a July 4 parade massacre — walked up to Greg Ring and handed him the 2-year-old boy, covered in blood.
Ring had fled the scene in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park with his wife and three children to an area behind a popular pancake house.
“We kind of met eyes and didn’t say anything.... I put my arms out, and she gave him to me,” Ring said Wednesday, when describing the exchange with the unidentified woman.
The boy pointed in the direction of the parade route, saying “Mommy, Daddy, Mommy, Daddy.”
Ring tucked the boy’s face in his chest, so he couldn’t see the carnage. But Ring quickly realized it was too dangerous.
“Active shooter! Get back down!” a police officer shouted. Ring fled again.
He and his family got to their car and took the boy to a Highland Park fire station. “I have a boy. He’s not ours,” he told the department staff, who asked him to keep the boy as authorities searched for the shooter and helped the wounded.
“They were getting ready for war,” Ring said.
The family drove to Ring’s in-laws, where they hunkered down. There, the boy sat with Ring’s 4-year-old, watching a Mickey Mouse show.
“He asked my wife to wipe him off because he had blood on him that wasn’t his,” said Ring, an insurance broker from Highland Park.
They were later able to identify the boy and reunite him with his grandparents.
Tuesday it emerged that the parents of 2-year-old Aiden, Irina and Kevin McCarthy, were among the seven people killed when gunfire erupted at the start of the local Fourth of July parade.
Aiden’s grandfather, Michael Levberg, told the Tribune on Tuesday that he was eventually reunited with his grandson after Aiden was taken to the local police station.
“When I picked him up, he said, ‘Are Mommy and Daddy coming soon?” Levberg said Tuesday evening. “He doesn’t understand.”
Seated on the front lawn with two friends in front of the family’s two-story brick Highland Park home under darkening storm clouds, Levberg, 65, talked about his daughter, son-in-law and grandson.
Irina, 35, was born in Moscow and moved with her family to Chicago when she was 2 ½ years old. They later moved to Highland Park, where she grew up and returned to raise her own family, Levberg said.
Irina and Kevin, 37, met while working together at Physicians Interactive in the northern suburbs, Levberg said, and got married about five years ago. They bought their Highland Park home in 2018, according to sales records.
His son-in-law had recently promised to take him on a sailing trip to Ireland for his birthday, Levberg said through tears.
Levberg said the whole family will be taking care of Aiden, but the 2-year old is still waiting for his mom and dad to come home.
“He doesn’t know,” Levberg said. “He doesn’t realize it.”
On Wednesday, Ring was still trying to process what happened at the July 4 parade. He said he’s not a hero and just did what anyone would have done in the situation.
“I’m just filled with immense gratitude. I’m really sad. I don’t know, I don’t know how I feel. I have not slept for a minute the last two nights,” he said.
“What could’ve happened — it is nothing short of a miracle that the five of us — me, my wife and my three kids — one of us or all of us isn’t dead. I do not understand. Everybody around us was hit or got shot.”
The five others who died were identified as Katherine Goldstein, 64; Stephen Straus, 88; Jacquelyn Sundheim, 63; Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78; and Eduardo Uvaldo, 69.
--The Associated Press and Chicago Tribune contributed
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