Trump rally gunman ‘didn’t want attention’ in school, classmates said

Bethel Park, Pa.: Before he climbed onto a rooftop and added his name to America’s bloody history of would-be presidential assassins, Thomas Crooks, 20, seemed to try to shrink from view.

Classmates who attended Bethel Park High School with him in the suburbs south of Pittsburgh described him in interviews on Monday as a smart but solitary and quiet student who walked through the halls with his head down, and who rarely raised his hand in class.

“He didn’t want attention, good or negative,” said Julianna Grooms, 19, who remembered first seeing Crooks when they were freshmen.

She and other former classmates have spent days texting one another, looking at old high-school photos and racking their memories for some clue about why Crooks opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, killing one attendee, critically wounding two others and grazing former President Donald Trump in the ear. Crooks was shot and killed by the Secret Service.

On Monday, federal investigators did not provide any new answers about the gunman’s motives or ideology, but said they had been able to access to Crooks’ cellphone and were analysing it, along with his other electronic devices.

The FBI said it had finished searching the gunman’s home and car, and had interviewed nearly 100 rally attendees, law enforcement officers and other witnesses and received hundreds of photos and videos from the rally and other digital tips.

“That work continues,” the FBI said in a statement. “The investigation is still in the early stages.”

Investigators have said that Crooks had not been on their radar, and had not revealed any strongly held political beliefs in the posts and texts investigators have reviewed so far.

Crooks had lived in Bethel Park, the son of two licensed counselors. Jennifer Meredith, a cousin, recalled him as a quiet boy who listened to his parents, but she added that she had not seen Crooks since he was about 6 years old.

The gunman’s father, Matthew Crooks, registered a family coat of arms online, and said in a biographical statement that he had attended local universities, and was married with a son and daughter. He said that “family is very important to me,” and the design on his coat of arms reflected “the interconnectedness and unity found within the family.”

Grooms, the gunman’s former classmate, said she did not remember Crooks from elementary school or middle school, and said she believed he attended a different middle school than most of the students at Bethel Park High School. The Bethel Park School District confirmed that Crooks graduated from high school in 2022, but declined to release any other details about his school record.

He seemed to stand out when they were freshmen, dressed in wide-legged jeans and SpongeBob T-shirts, Grooms said. She said some students teased him about his hygiene and awkward, solitary bearing.

“Those other kids would always say, ‘Hey, look at the school shooter over there!’” Grooms said. “They would tease him about his poor hygiene, his body odor. He was an easy target.”

Eventually he started wearing neutral-colored clothing, she said, and T-shirts with American flags. He sometimes wore camouflage, but so did many other students in a school with a rifle club, and in a region where hunting is a popular pastime.

Anna Dusch, 20, took an Advanced Placement American government class with Crooks during their senior year, after classes had returned to normal following the pandemic-related disruptions of virtual learning, staggered classes and masking.

She said that Crooks always seemed to know the class material, but never revealed any political views in class.

“I would’ve never known who he was voting for,” she said. “He seemed to be really intelligent. If there was a fact to be said, he knew it.”

She said that Crooks seemed to keep to himself, but never gave her any reason to worry.

“He was a little bit odd, but I never would’ve suspected this,” she said. “I don’t think any of us knew who he was.”

Crooks does not appear to have gone far from home after he graduated from high school in 2022. He had been working as a dietary aide at a nursing home in Bethel Park, and received an associate degree in engineering science two months ago from the nearby Community College of Allegheny County.

He was registered to vote as a Republican, but federal campaign-finance records show he also donated $15 to a progressive cause in January 2021. His mother was registered to vote as a Democrat, and his father as a Libertarian.

The father and son seemed to share an interest in guns.

Crooks had been a member of the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a gun club that features a 200-yard-rifle range.

Federal investigators said that his father purchased the AR-15-style rifle used in the shooting, but said they did not know whether the gunman had taken the weapon without his father’s permission.

An email address linked to his father was used to open an eBay account that made at least a half-dozen purchases from different online vendors that sold gun parts, including some within the last six months. It was not clear what was bought from the vendors.

A representative for one of the vendors, Osage County Guns in Wright City, Missouri, confirmed that the account had made one purchase “very long ago” that was unrelated to any type of rifle, but declined to specify the exact item. EBay’s online policy says that vendors are prohibited from listing firearms or any parts and accessories for assault weapons.

Another email account linked to the gunman’s father left a Google review seven months ago for an online guns business, praising it as “the easiest best way to get rid of unwanted firearms.”

The eBay account linked to Matthew Crooks also shows a long list of purchases from businesses that sell coins, gold bars and silver dollars.