Trump's would-be assassin had little time to prepare – and left little trace of plot

Thomas Matthew Crooks wasn’t an ex-CIA agent with a homemade gun that could slip through metal detectors.

He didn’t carry an Uzi and wear a black tuxedo.

He was not a professional killer like the ones depicted in those movies – or like a Jason Bourne or John Wick.

Crooks was an isolated Gen-Zer with an associate’s degree who worked a low-wage job and lived with his parents. Yet in an increasingly online world, where digital surveillance is easier than ever, the 20-year-old managed to stay unusually hidden while devising a plan to murder a former U.S. president – nearly successfully – in just 10 days of planning.

Butler, Pennsylvania, population 13,000, would not have been the most likely campaign stop for Donald Trump. In fact, he had visited just once before his now-infamous July 13 rally, on Halloween night in the days leading up to the November 2020 election. Thousands of red-hatted supporters cheered as he took the stage set up next to the Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport.

It wasn’t until July 3 that The Butler Eagle and other outlets reported that Trump would become the first-ever president, current or former, to return to the city for a second rally.

Until that point, there would have been no way to predict that this rally would be held at the Butler Farm Show grounds – putting the Republican nominee for president 54 miles from the Crooks family home. Or that Secret Service agents and local police would leave the rooftop of an industrial building 150 yards from Trump’s podium unmanned.

Hours before the shooting, Crooks stopped at a Home Depot in his hometown of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, and purchased a ladder, CNN and NBC reported.

Somewhere outside the rally venue, he parked a car with an explosive device in the trunk. Although cops were reportedly stationed inside the building that houses a company that manufactures equipment for the bottle industry, Crooks appears to have climbed on top with an AR-15-style gun, undetected, until some in the crowd spied him and began pointing and shouting.

“The security failures by law enforcement that day helped him look a lot more sophisticated than he would normally,” said Seamus Hughes, a researcher at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center at the University of Nebraska Omaha. “If you had put an agent on the roof as opposed to in the building, it goes from a very sophisticated attack to a very foolish attack.”

Still, Hughes said, it seems clear that Crooks demonstrated “a level of sophistication,” plotting the attack on short notice, without amassing an Internet footprint delineating any ideology – or even hitting law enforcement’s radar.

“That’s what makes Crooks so unique,” Hughes said. “In this day and age, that’s quite a feat.”

Smart kid who liked to shoot guns – but was a ‘bad shot’

Crooks grew up in a three-bedroom brick house with a covered porch and a wood deck in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. It’s a suburb near Pittsburgh where the median household income is $100,000 and grass yards blend together without fences.

His parents were licensed counselors, dad a Libertarian, mom a Democrat. He had a sister, also a Libertarian, two grades older.

His own political leanings remain unclear. He donated $15 to ActBlue, a political action committee supporting Democrats, in January 2021, the day of President Joseph Biden’s inauguration. Eight days after his 18th birthday that September, Crooks registered to vote in Allegheny County as a Republican.

Trump rally shooter Thomas Crooks: Neighbors, classmates, employer speak

As a kid, Crooks wore patriotic shirts, like the ash-gray Mount Rushmore t-shirt he chose for his sophomore yearbook photo.

He liked to shoot guns. He and his father were members of the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, situated atop a wooded plateau eight miles from his home. It’s a sprawling, 180-acre complex with rifle, pistol, archery and competition ranges, a dog training area, club house and more than 2,000 local members. It also has safety classes and youth activities.

Some former classmates described Crooks as a loner – a smart kid who kept to himself and had few friends.

He went by "Tom,” said Sean Eckert, who went to school with him in Bethel Park from 5th through 12th grade. He rarely spoke up in class. He often wore hunting clothes. Eckert said he didn’t remember Crooks playing any sports, belonging to any clubs or student groups or going to school events.

Jason Kohler, who attended Bethel Park High School with Crooks, said he sat alone at lunch and was “bullied every day.” Kids picked on him for wearing camouflage and for his quiet demeanor, Kohler said. Others, though, insisted he was not bullied at all.

Colan Saffer, who had known Crooks since elementary school, said they both tried out for the Bethel Park High School rifle team their freshman year. Kohler said Crooks couldn’t compete with his peers and was asked to leave because he was “a bad shot.”

A year before he earned his diploma in spring 2022, Crooks dual-enrolled at Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh, studying engineering science. He also worked as a dietary aide at a nearby nursing home, a food preparation job that pays $16 an hour, according to a job listing.

He completed his associate’s degree in May, school officials said, graduating with high honors and no discipline record. He planned to enroll at Robert Morris University in the fall.

This summer, Crooks was still too young to buy a beer, but he could legally buy an AR-15 online or at one of a half-dozen gun stores within five miles of his home.

He didn’t need to, though; according to FBI officials, he used his dad’s.

What happened on Saturday, July 13?

Moments before spectators heard the pop, pop, pop of gunfire at the Butler rally, a handful of spectators tried to get the attention of police: A suspicious man, they said, was on the roof.

“Someone’s on top of the roof,” a man says in a video posted on social media the next day, while Trump speaks into a microphone in the background. “Officer! Officer!" one man yells. “He’s on the roof!” a woman adds.

A man with long, light brown hair wearing a beige shirt and pants can be seen lying prone on the upward-slanting roof, adjusting his position, apparently unconcerned about the people yelling and pointing at him and the police officer looking in his direction.

Crooks began shooting nearly a minute and a half after the shouts, a Washington Post analysis found. He fired at least five shots, one whizzing past Trump’s head – nicking his ear. Bullets struck three rally goers seated in the line of fire. One man was killed.

Mike McMullen of the Gibsonia area in Allegheny County, a delegate representing U.S. House District 17, was standing about 20 feet to the left of the presidential candidate when shots rang out.

It sounded like fireworks at first, McMullen said. Then he saw Trump hit the deck holding his ear and Secret Service agents pile on top of him.

“It was pure pandemonium,” McMullen said.

Seconds later, a Secret Service agent fired one shot at Crooks, killing him. An AR-style rifle was found next to his body. The T-shirt he was wearing bore the logo of Demolition Ranch, a YouTube channel with 11 million subscribers hosted by a gun influencer. Authorities would find a “suspicious device” in his car.

Motive remains elusive as investigation unfolds 

Law enforcement officials remain flummoxed so far about Crooks’ motive, multiple news outlets reported. Although they gained access to his phone, CNN reported that they still haven’t found evidence of a political or ideological impetus, and that his search history did not show he had researched homemade explosives.

In some ways, Crooks resembles a typical mass shooter, said Hughes: Namely, he was young, male and apparently a loner.

But in other ways, Crooks seems to buck trends. Those who threaten public officials are typically twice Crooks’ age. Whereas more than two-thirds have documented criminal histories, Crooks has none.

The National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center, where Hughes works, studies such threats. Among people arrested on federal charges for threatening public officials, those with an ideological bent veered toward right-wing, racially motivated – and often misogynistic or religious – violent extremism.

That profile extends to the man who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket and the man who killed 11 Jewish people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

But of the 503 arrested individuals, more than half did not display any ideological bent, Hughes said, which can be frustrating for the public and law enforcement to accept. In that way, he said, Crooks more closely resembles the man who shot more than 400 people at a Las Vegas music concert, killing 60, whose motive police still don’t understand.

“He may fall in this category of what we call ‘The Joker Effect,’” Hughes said. “Some people want to become infamous, or they just want to watch the world burn.”

Contributing: Aysha Bagchi, Bryce Buyakie, Tim Evans, Rick Jervis, Emily Le Coz and Josh Meyer.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump shooter had little time, left little trace of deadly plot