The images have already gone around the world. Donald Trump, blood on his face, surrounded by members of his security detail, his fist raised. The former President of the United States, a candidate for the White House, was targeted on Saturday, July 13, by an assassination attempt while he was holding a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Donald Trump was lightly hit in the ear, two spectators were seriously injured. A spectator at the rally was killed, as was the alleged shooter.
At a press conference Saturday night, the FBI confirmed that the shooting was an “attempted assassination.” The FBI said in a statement that the suspected gunman “fired multiple shots toward the scene from an elevated position outside the rally” before being “neutralized” by agents.
Registered with the Republicans
Unverified images show the body of the alleged assailant lying on the sloping roof of a low-rise building from where he fired. Multiple witnesses said they saw the shooter before the shooting and alerted Butler police, who said they had “responded to a number of reports of suspicious activity,” without providing further details. The shooter, who was armed with an AR15 semi-automatic rifle according to US media, was identified by the FBI on Sunday as “Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.”
While the FBI has not released any further information about him, saying that “the investigation is ongoing,” some details about his profile are beginning to emerge in the press across the Atlantic. “The FBI said it is trying to determine his motive and has asked the public to come forward with anything they know about Crooks. The shooter was killed. Crooks was registered as a Republican, according to state records,” states The Washington Post.
“The shooter had no prior criminal history,” according to Pennsylvania court records, the New York TimesThe American daily specifies that Thomas Matthew “Crooks appears to have graduated in 2022 from Bethel Park High School, which has about 1,400 students, and received that year a ‘star award’ of $500 from the National Initiative for Mathematics and Science, according to the Tribune Review“, a local newspaper.