Terrified dad put son and dog in bin to escape shooter during 4th of July parade

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A horror-stricken father described how he had to hide his two-year-old child in a rubbish skip to escape a crazed gunman who opened fire on a Fourth of July parade in Illinois, USA.

The shooter unleashed a hail of bullets on the celebrations in Highland Park, Chicago, just minutes after they started, leaving six people dead and around 30 injured.

There was chaos as terrified people fled the scene, running for cover and abandoning items they had brought with them as they attempted to avoid being shot.

READ MORE: Multiple people gunned down as shooter fired into parade 'from rooftop' – 60 shots heard

The suspect has been arrested and is named as 22-year-old Robert ‘Bobby’ Crimo III, who is said to have opened fire from the roof of what was an outdoor outfitting store.

For Alexander Sandoval, a construction contractor and local resident, it was a harrowing experience, one in which he was desperate to get his child to safety amid all the carnage going off around him.

He told the New York Times: “When it started happening, I thought it was the Navy saluting the flag. Then I grabbed my kid and we ran and tried to break a store window to get away from it.

“I was punching the, door but couldn’t punch through it. I think the shooter stopped and reloaded, and that’s when I ran around the corner and put my son and little brother in a dumpster, and his dog.”

Tears welled up in his eyes as he explained how he saw a police officer carrying away a small boy, before adding: “It was just terror."

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Witnesses have now told how they saw children being picked off in the crowd by the gunman from a rooftop along the route.

A woman, who gave her name only as Zoe, told CNN: “All of a sudden everyone behind us started running. I looked back, probably 20 feet away from me, I saw a girl shot and killed. I saw her die. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Witnesses described a “sickening” scene and is it feared that children are among the dead.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement: “There are no words for the kind of monster who lies in wait and fires into a crowd of families with children celebrating a holiday with their community.”

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