(UnitedHeadlines.com) – The person who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump during his July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, has been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20.
Shortly after taking the stage, more than five gunshots rang out at the Butler Farm Show grounds. Trump grabbed his ear and dropped to the ground as Secret Service agents surrounded him. As they picked him up to rush him off the stage, with blood seen on his face, he stopped to raise his arms and tell the crowd to “Fight.”
Crooks, from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was killed by a Secret Service sniper just after he fired the shots at the former president from outside the rally venue and from an “elevated position.” According to officials, he used an AR-15-style rifle to shoot at Trump from the roof of a building at the manufacturing plant, AGR International Inc., located about 164 yards away from the stage.
Officials from the Department of Homeland Security stated that before the rally, he purchased 50 rounds of ammunition from a gun shop in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.
According to state records, he was registered as a Republican. However, on the day of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, he donated $15 to a progressive PAC.
He graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022, and, according to a former classmate and member of the school’s varsity rifle team, Jameson Myers, Crooks tried out for the team when he was a freshman but did not make it. He did not try out for the team again.
Rally attendee Corey Comperatore, 50, a firefighter from Sarver, Pennsylvania, was killed after he pushed his wife and daughter to the ground to protect them. Two men, David Dutch, 57, who was shot in the liver and chest, and James Copenhaver, 74, are in stable condition after being injured in the shooting.
According to the FBI, it has taken on the role of the lead federal law enforcement agency in the assassination investigation.
Copyright 2024, UnitedHeadlines.com
