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Gun Violence

Year after mass shooting, Highland Park asks: What does freedom mean this Fourth of July?

Portrait of Grace Hauck Grace Hauck
USA TODAY

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. − Nancy Rotering once relished the joy of bringing her children to her hometown Independence Day parade − the same one she walked in as a child.

But that joy was shattered last year, when Rotering and thousands of others at Highland Park's Fourth of July celebration fled in terror after a gunman armed with an AR-15-style rifle opened fire from a rooftop.