Here’s what’s known about Thomas Crooks, 20, the gunman identified by the FBI in the Trump shooting
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The 20-year-old who attempted to assassinate former US president Donald Trump at a rally did not have a criminal history.
PHOTO: AFP
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PENNSYLVANIA - The gunman who attempted to assassinate former US president Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania
“This remains an active and ongoing investigation,” the FBI said in a statement early on July 14.
Law enforcement officials said that Crooks carried no identification to the site of the shooting and had to be identified using other methods.
“We’re looking at photographs right now and we’re trying to run his DNA and get biometric confirmation,” FBI special agent in charge Kevin Rojek said during a press briefing.
The gunman did not have a criminal history reflected in Pennsylvania’s public court records, and officials said they had not identified a motive.
A voter registration record indicated that Crooks was registered as a Republican, though federal campaign finance records showed he donated US$15 (S$20) to the Progressive Turnout Project, a liberal voter turnout group, through the Democratic donation platform ActBlue in January 2021.
The upcoming Nov 5 election would have been the first time Crooks had been old enough to vote in a presidential race.
His father Matthew Crooks, 53, told CNN that he was trying to figure out what happened, and would wait until he spoke to law enforcement before speaking about his son.
Early in the morning on July 14, law enforcement officers had closed down all roads leading towards the home of the suspect’s family in Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh and about an hour’s drive from the site of the rally in Butler.
Crooks was killed after he fired from “an elevated position” outside the outdoor rally venue where Trump was speaking, according to the Secret Service.
Law enforcement officials recovered an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle near the body of a white man they believe was the gunman, according to two law enforcement officials.
Crooks appears to have graduated in 2022 from Bethel Park High School, which has about 1,400 students, and received a US$500 “star award” that year from the National Math and Science Initiative, according to The Tribune-Review in western Pennsylvania.
In an online recording of the 2022 graduation ceremony, Crooks can be seen crossing the stage to modest applause after his name is called out, a slender young man with glasses in a black graduation gown who briefly posed with a school official and accepted his diploma. NYTIMES
