Bullied outcast used father’s rifle to take aim at Trump

Classmate says Republican-registered suspect in the attempted assassination of the former president – who had also donated to the Democrats – was picked on relentlessly for the way he dressed and his appearance.

Thomas Matthew Crooks has been identified as the shooter.

The suspect accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump has been described as a loner obsessed with guns who used his father’s semiautomatic rifle in the attack.

The authorities identified Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, a registered Republican who had donated to the Democratic Party on the day President Biden was inaugurated, as the suspect who was shot and killed by Secret Service agents after he fired a volley of shots towards a stage where the former president was speaking at a campaign event.

Law enforcement officials said they retrieved an AR-15-style rifle from next to Crooks’s body and later discovered two explosive devices in his vehicle and bomb-making materials at his home.

Crooks was photographed after being shot and killed in cream-coloured cargo-style shorts with a belt and a grey shirt bearing the logo of a popular YouTube channel called Demolition Ranch, which features videos demonstrating how to use certain guns and test their effectiveness.

Donald Trump assassination attempt: how it happened

Matt Carriker, the host of the channel, which has more than 11 million subscribers, posted a photo of the suspect on his Instagram page with the caption: “What the hell.”

According to police sources, Crooks’s father, Matthew Crooks, 53, had legally bought the rifle used in the shooting at least six months ago. The officials said that federal agents were still working to understand when and how Thomas Crooks obtained the rifle, but it was said that the family owned several guns.

Crooks’s father told CNN that he was trying to figure out “what the hell happened” and would wait until he had seen the police before speaking to the media.

Crooks graduated in 2022 from Bethel Park High School in Bethel, Pennsylvania, 40 miles away from Trump’s campaign event in Butler. He received a $US500 “star award” from the National Math and Science Initiative, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Video posted online appears to show Crooks, with dark blond hair and wearing thin-framed glasses, accepting his diploma at a graduation ceremony.

In an interview with a Pennsylvania radio station, one Bethel Park classmate described him as a loner who was bullied relentlessly and often wore hunting clothes. The classmate, Jason Kohler, 21, said Crooks was “bullied almost every day. He was bullied so much, so much; it was honestly kind of sad. He would sit alone at lunch. He was just an outcast, he was just made fun of for the way he dressed or his appearance. I don’t want to say this is what provoked it, but you never know.”

Crooks was employed as a dietary aide at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, according to its administrator, who said Crooks had “performed his job without concern, and his background check was clean”.

In video taken minutes before the shooting at about 6pm, a gunman can be seen crawling into position on the roof of a building near the rally. A witness, Michael Difrischia, said that he and his wife, Amber, had been watching Trump speak from outside the main grounds when Amber noticed a man climbing up on to the structure, about 200 yards away from Trump.

In the video a woman can be heard screaming what sounds like: “Crooks, what are you doing? Get down from there.”

Secret Service agents opened fire on the suspect, killing him instantly. Crooks is then seen lying dead with blood staining his hair and face.

Crooks, a registered Republican, made a dollars 15 donation on January 20, 2021, to ActBlue, a political action committee that raises money for left-wing and Democratic politicians, according to a Federal Election Commission filing. The donation was earmarked for the Progressive Turnout Project, a national group that rallies Democrats to vote.

Crooks’s uncle, Mark, told the Daily Mail that he had not seen the gunman or his parents in years, and described them as very private.

Agencies are investigating his motive and whether anybody else was involved. “We do not currently have an identified motive,” Kevin Rojek, the FBI Pittsburgh special agent in charge, told a briefing on Saturday night.

The inquiry into what took place could last for months and investigators would work tirelessly to identify Crooks’s motive, he said.

Lieutenant Colonel George Bivens of Pennsylvania State Police was asked whether the gunman had acted alone and replied that it was too early to say. “It will be some time until we can conclusively … answer that question,” he added.

The Times