Nicolas Toledo, a 78-year-old grandfather who attended the parade with his family, was struck three times, his granddaughter Xochil Toledo told the New York Post.
“It could’ve been major. He took three bullets, and those bullets could have been aimed at either me or my boyfriend,” she said, calling her grandfather a “lifesaver.”
Toledo was not keen on going to the parade but went with his family because he was disabled and required around-the-clock care, the New York Times reported. He used a wheelchair and had other medical issues after being hit by a car in Highland Park a few years ago, and he’d recently moved back to the US after living in Mexico so that his family could care for him, according to the Times.
“What was suppose[d] to be a fun family day turned into a horrific nightmare for us all,” Xochil wrote in a GoFundMe.
He had eight children and many more grandchildren, she wrote, describing him as “a loving man, creative, adventurous and funny.”
Another granddaughter, Kimberly Rangel, said the family was broken by Toledo’s death. “I think you hear about these things on the news all the time, but you don’t expect it to happen so close to home, and especially to your family,” she told CBS Chicago. “It’s all kind of affected us really hard.”
Jacki Sundheim
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/paigeskinner/highland-park-memorials-victims
