The Daily Populous Sunday July 14th, 2024 evening edition
Authored by nbcnews.com and submitted by ThaBlackLoki

Law enforcement authorities have identified the man who made an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

The FBI said the shooter, who is dead, was identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. A motive was not clear.

The gunman was immediately “neutralized” by the Secret Service, chief of communications Anthony Guglielmi said.

Crooks used a semiautomatic rifle, three senior U.S. 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 dad and had been purchased legally, according to two senior law enforcement officials.

Bethel Park is a predominantly white, relatively well-to-do city in the southern reaches of greater Pittsburgh. The site of the rally, 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 & Science Initiative Star Award that year, according to a story in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

A high school classmate, Jason Kohler, 21, said Crooks was a "loner" who was “bullied so much in high school.”

Crooks would regularly wear hunting outfits and was made fun of for the way he dressed. He often sat alone at lunch, Kohler added.

Michael Dudjak, 20, went to school with Crooks for most of his life, recalling him as a relatively reserved and quiet classmate. He didn't hear or see Crooks being actively bullied by their peers, but Dudjak did describe Crooks as someone who was "on his own a lot."

He couldn't recall Crooks ever being outspoken about politics or very active on social media. Dudjak was with some friends and acquaintances from high school on Saturday night when he learned that Crooks was the shooter.

They were all "in shock" and "couldn't fathom" the news, Dudjak said.

"It's definitely terrifying for someone you went to school with to commit such a heinous act ... that's the craziest thing about it when it entered my brain," 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 to wake up to the news that a neighbor was responsible for the assassination attempt. “It’s absolutely nuts,” said the man, 39-year-old Andrew Blanco.

Blanco said most people on the block are 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 outside,” Blanco said.

Dan Grzybek, a Democrat who serves on the Allegheny County council and lives down the street from the shooter’s home in Bethel Park, said neighbors can't believe the shooter lived among them.

“No one ever expects that something like this would be done by someone who lives right in their neighborhood,” Grzybek told NBC News.

Grzybek said when he was running for his county council seat last fall, 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 has not previously met the shooter. It was a “very typical voter conversation,” Grzybek said.

The Pentagon confirmed that Crooks had no affiliation with the U.S. military.

Thomas Matthew Crooks. Obtained by NBC News

Pennsylvania voter records listed a Thomas Matthew Crooks with the same address and birth date as a registered Republican. But Crooks appeared to have made a $15 donation to a liberal PAC on inauguration day in 2021, according to Federal Election Commission records.

At a news conference Saturday night, law enforcement said the investigation was close to making a positive identification of the shooter, who did not have identification on him, state police Lt. Col. George Bivens said.

“The shooter has been tentatively identified,” he said. “It’s a matter of doing biometric confirmations.”

GurthNada on July 14th, 2024 at 11:26 UTC »

One thing that intrigues me at the moment is how did the guy plan his attack. For example, why would he assume that the rooftop would be left unsecured? If he didn't think it through and just got extremely lucky (if one can say so), what were the chances of that happening? Does it imply that would-be shooters are regularly arrested near political rallies?

a_phantom_limb on July 14th, 2024 at 10:13 UTC »

How did the Secret Service blow this so thoroughly? The only reason it was just an attempted assassination is because he missed.

Their entire job is to stop the bullet before it's fired, or, failing that, place themselves between the bullet and its target. If that guy had aimed a fraction of a degree differently, Trump would have been dead before they were even able to react.

doctor_of_drugs on July 14th, 2024 at 06:39 UTC »

Dude couldn’t even buy alcohol or cigarettes legally…