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The gunman who carried out an attempted assassination on Donald Trump at a rally has been identified by the FBI.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old resident of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, opened fire while the former president was speaking on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
Multiple shots were fired towards the stage, and Mr Trump was surrounded and rushed off by his Secret Service detail with blood streaming from his ear down his cheek.
Later on Truth Social, Mr Trump confirmed that one of the bullets had struck him in the ear.
The Secret Service said the gunman was shot and killed at the scene.
In a press conference after the shooting, 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.
Questions remain about the gunman’s motive and how he was able to carry out an attack at a rally where the former president was flanked by Secret Service protection.
Who was Thomas Matthew Crooks?
Crooks, 20, 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 lunch time. 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 was 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.
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.
A local police officer encountered Crooks before he fired towards Mr Trump, AP sources say. Not long before shots rang out, rally goers 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 former President Trump, and that’s when the US 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.
Crooks’s father Matthew Crooks 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. Investigators later recovered a cache of explosives from Crooks’s car, according to reports.
“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.”
