Boy, 2, loses both his parents in Highland Park shooting

A toddler was orphaned in Monday’s shooting at the Highland Park Independence Day parade.

Among the seven dead were Kevin McCarthy, 37, and Irina McCarthy, 35, police said Tuesday. They were parents to 2-year-old Aiden, who became separated from them in the melee as gunfire rained down from a rooftop in the Illinois city.

The boy was unharmed physically.

“Aiden will be cared for by his loving grandparents, Misha and Nina Levberg, and he will have a long road ahead to heal, find stability, and ultimately navigate life as an orphan,” reads a GoFundMe page. “He is surrounded by a community of friends and extended family that will embrace him with love, and any means available to ensure he has everything he needs as he grows.”

Two couples had a hand in his rescue. First there were mother of two Lauren Silva of Deerfield, Ill., who had gone for breakfast with her boyfriend at the very corner that would soon erupt in gunfire. She was craving banana pancakes.

As the couple walked upstairs with her boyfriend’s son, they heard it.

“We were just opening the door to walk up the stairs and we heard it … boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,” Silva told The Daily Beast. “And it sounded like someone was, like, pounding on the glass doors.”

They rushed toward those lying on the ground, thinking to help them, when suddenly Silva’s boyfriend thrust the blood-covered toddler in her arms. He had been lying under his unconscious father and was covered in his father’s blood, she said.

Silva took Aiden down to the parking garage, where she encountered another family. That was Greg and Dana Ring, who had taken shelter there with their three kids.

“She was physically shaking, her whole body,” Dana Ring told CBS News. “Which told us that … she shouldn’t be having to hold, and/or deal with a little one at the same time.”

Silva asked them to watch the boy, and he was eventually reunited with his grandparents.