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The gunman who carried out an attempted assassination on Donald Trump at a rally has been identified by the FBI as Thomas Matthew Crooks.
The 20-year-old resident of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, opened fire with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle while the former president was speaking on stage in the rural town of Butler on July 13.
Multiple shots were fired toward the stage and Trump was quickly surrounded and rushed to safety by his Secret Service detail, with blood streaming from his ear down his cheek.
Trump confirmed that one of the bullets had struck him in the right ear. A Secret Service sniper shot dead the gunman at the scene.
Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old volunteer fire chief, died in the shooting while trying to protect his family at the rally.
The FBI said they were investigating the shooting as a potential act of domestic terrorism, but the ideological motive of the man shot dead by the Secret Service remains unknown.
Law enforcement officials said that they were using the shooter’s DNA for biometric confirmation as he was carrying no identification at the time of the attack.
Who was Thomas Matthew Crooks?
Crooks lived in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park, located around 35 miles south of where Trump was holding his rally in Butler County.
Local media reported that Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022 and received a $500 “star award” that year from the National Math and Science Initiative.
Jason Kohler, who said he attended the same high school but did not share any classes with Crooks, said Crooks was bullied at school and sat alone at lunchtime.
Other students mocked him for the way he dressed, such as hunting outfits, Kohler said. “He was bullied almost every day,” Kohler told reporters. “He was just a outcast, and you know how kids are nowadays.”
Crooks “never outwardly spoke about his political views or how much he hated Trump or anything,” Sarah D’Angelo, who attended Bethel Park High School alongside Crooks, told The Wall Street Journal. She said Crooks enjoyed playing video games, and was known to have “a few friends,” but lacked “a whole friend group.
Another former classmate, Zach Bradford, told The New York Times that Crooks was “incredibly intelligent,” and that his politics were “slightly right leaning.”
“I would have pegged him as a Republican,” a third classmate told the New York Post.
Crooks was indeed registered to vote as a Republican, according to Pennsylvania’s voter database that matched his name, age, and address to public records.
However, federal campaign finance reports show that he had made a $15 contribution to a Democratic-aligned political action committee called Progressive Turnout Project on 20 January 2021, CNN reported.
He tried out for the school’s rifle team but was turned away because he was a bad shooter, according to Frederick Mach, the current captain of the team.
Suspect used roof as sniper’s nest
Law enforcement officials said that Crooks fired from the elevated roof of a shed outside of the security perimeter on Saturday, around 500ft from where Trump was speaking.
The FBI believes Crooks, who had bomb-making materials in the car he drove to the rally, acted alone. Investigators have found no threatening comments on social media accounts or ideological positions that could help explain what led him to target Trump.
A local police officer encountered Crooks before he fired toward Mr Trump. Not long before shots rang out, rallygoers noticed a man climbing to the top of a roof of a nearby building and warned local law enforcement, according to two law enforcement officials.
One officer climbed to the roof and encountered Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder and Crooks quickly took a shot toward Trump, and that’s when the Secret Service counter snipers shot him, said the officials who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
He used an AR-15-type, semi-automatic rifle in the attack, according to law enforcement. On Sunday, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News that the AR-15 found next to Crooks’s body had been purchased legally by his father, Mattew.
Family shocked at Crooks’s involvement
The father told CNN that he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” when reached for comment after the shooting. He said that he would “wait until I talk to law enforcement” before speaking about his son.
Reached by phone, Crooks’s uncle, Mark Crooks, told The Independent that he had “no idea” what might have spurred his nephew to take aim at the former president.
“I don’t know what to say,” he conceded. The uncle said he hadn’t had any contact with Crooks “in years”, despite living just 20 miles away.
“I haven’t seen the kid since he was little,” Mark Crooks said. “He never wanted to bother [maintaining a relationship with me and my wife], so we don’t see him.”
Asked if it was a shock to find out his nephew had made an attempt on Trump’s life, he replied, “What do you think? Of course it was.”
Crooks’s motive for the attack remains unknown but it is being treated as an assassination attempt.
“This remains an active and ongoing investigation, and anyone with information that may assist with the investigation is encouraged to submit photos or videos online,” the FBI said in a statement.
A former high school classmate of Crooks said he had not expressed any deeply-held political leanings during the time she knew him.
“He never outwardly spoke about his political views or how much he hated Trump or anything,” Sarah D’Angelo told The Wall Street Journal.
A witness, identified only as Greg, said that he tried to alert Secret Service agents to a rifle-wielding man he spotted “bear crawling” onto the roof of a nearby building before gunshots rang through the crowd.
“We’re pointing at the guy crawling up the roof. We could clearly see him with a rifle,” he told the BBC.
“I’m standing there pointing at him for two to three minutes. Secret Service is looking at us from the top of the barn, I’m pointing at the roof... and next thing you know, five shots rang out,” he added.
Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said they were still reviewing the security detail that the Secret Service had in place and confirmed that officials only discovered Crooks was on the roof when he began firing, raising questions about security lapses.
“We’re still working through the security apparatus that the Secret Service had in place, what potentially happened,” Mr Rojek said.
“There’s going to be a long investigation into exactly what took place and how the individual was able to get access to the location, what type of weapon he had. All that is really days, weeks, and months of investigation.”
In remarks from Delaware following the shooting on Saturday, president Joe Biden said that “there’s no place in America for this kind of violence. It’s sick.”
Donald Trump’s reaction to attempted assassination
Meanwhile, Trump said he was saved from death because he turned from the crowd to look at a screen displaying a chart he was referring to in his speech.
“That reality is just setting in,” he told The Washington Examiner. “I rarely look away from the crowd. Had I not done that in that moment, well, we would not be talking today, would we?”
He also says he has rewritten the speech he was set to deliver at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Thursday.
“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,” he said.
Trump’s October return to ‘finish’ rally in Butler
Months after the assassination attempt, on October 5, Trump plans to return to the Butler venue. He had long vowed to return to the scene of the harrowing incident.
Days before his return, Trump called the venue the “safest place on Earth,” perhaps alluding to the security enhancements that have been put in place. Secret Service came under intense scrutiny in the weeks that followed the shooting, prompting the head of the agency to resign. The agency has said it has increased its security presence around Trump since July 13 so he has the “highest level of security” that it provides.
To address issues experienced in July, for the October rally, the Secret Service will work out of a “unified command post” with state, local and federal partners, will have drones monitoring the area, and “secured some of the sight lines,” a source in law enforcement familiar with the plan told The Independent. There will be “a large coordinated presence of law enforcement,” the source added.
Trump will speak behind ballistic glass, as he has been doing in the months since the attack.
Victims of the tragedy are expected to be honored at the October 5 rally.
After surviving two assassination attempts — another occurred on September 15 at his West Palm Beach golf course — Trump suggested that he would pick up just where he left off on July 13, quipping at an Erie, Pennsylvania rally: “I think I’ll start the speech by saying, ‘As I was saying.’”
