Law enforcement authorities have identified the man who carried out the attack assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
The FBI said the shooter, who is dead, has been identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.
The Secret Service immediately “neutralized” the attacker, Communications Chief Anthony Guglielmi said.
Crooks used a semi-automatic rifle, three senior US law enforcement officials said, based on what was found at the scene. Investigators are looking into whether the gun used by the shooter belonged to his father and was purchased legally, according to two senior law enforcement officials.
Crooks is believed to have fired eight shots before being shot down, the official said, citing preliminary findings.
Multiple suspicious canisters or containers were found in Crooks’ vehicle, but it was unclear whether they functioned as incendiary or explosive devices, the two officials said.
Crooks’ family is cooperating with investigators, but his motive remains unclear, said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the case.
Bethel Park is a predominantly white, relatively well-to-do town in the southern reaches of greater Pittsburgh. The rally site, Butler, is about an hour’s drive north of Pittsburgh.
Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022. He was among more than a dozen students who received a National Math and Science Initiative award that year, according to a story in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
High school classmate Jason Kohler, 21, said Crooks was a “loner” who was “bullied so much in high school.”
Thieves regularly wore hunting clothes and were ridiculed for the way he dressed, Kohler said.
“He would sit alone at lunch. He was just an outcast,” Kohler added. “Honestly, it’s kind of sad.”
Michael Dudjak, 20, who went to school with Crooks for most of his life, remembers him as a relatively reserved and quiet classmate. He didn’t hear or see Crooks being actively bullied by his peers, but Crooks was “alone a lot,” Dudjak said.
He can’t recall Crooks ever being outspoken about politics or being very active on social media. Duđak was with friends and acquaintances from high school on Saturday night when he learned that Crooks had shot.
Everyone was “in shock” and “couldn’t understand” the news, Duđak said.
“It’s definitely scary for someone you went to school with to commit such a heinous act … it’s the craziest thing when it crossed my mind,” Dudjak said. “You were in the same class as this person two years ago.”
A man who lives on Crooks Street said he was shocked when he woke up to the news that his neighbor was responsible for the assassination attempt. “It’s absolutely crazy,” said the man, 39-year-old Andrew Blanco.
Blanco said most people on the block were friendly, but he rarely saw or spoke to anyone at Crooks’ home.
“I just don’t know anything about them because they’re not even out there,” Blanco said.
Dan Grzybek, a Democrat who serves on the Allegheny County Council and lives down the street from the killer’s home in Bethel Park, said neighbors can’t believe the killer lived among them.
“No one ever expects someone who lives in their neighborhood to do something like this,” Grzybek told NBC News.
Grzybek said that last fall, when he was running for a county council seat, he met Crooks’ parents while door-knocking in the neighborhood. Speaking at the family’s front door, Grzybek said he had a “very pleasant conversation” with Crooks’ parents.
Grzybek said he had not met the shooter before. It was “a very typical voter conversation,” Grzybek said.
The Pentagon confirmed that Crooks had no ties to the US military.
Pennsylvania voter rolls list a Thomas Matthew Crooks with the same address and date of birth as a registered Republican. But Crooks appears to have made a $15 donation to a liberal PAC on Inauguration Day 2021, according to Federal Election Commission records.
At a press conference Saturday night, police said the investigation is close to positively identifying the killer, who did not have identification on him, said a state police lieutenant. Colonel George Bivens said.
“The killer has been tentatively identified,” he said. “It’s about biometric credentials.”
