Posted by A 2020 High School yearbook photo of Thomas Matthew Crooks
The FBI has identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania as the suspect in yesterday’s attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump at a campaign rally.
The suspect was shot and killed by the Secret Service seconds after he allegedly fired shots toward a stage where Mr Trump and was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The FBI said it was working to determine a motive for the attack, in which one spectator was killed and two others were critically injured.
Mr Trump was shot in the ear.
State voter records show that Mr Crooks was a registered Republican. The upcoming 5 November election would have been the first time he was old enough to vote in a presidential race.
He lived about an hour away from where the shooting took place in Butler. The Federal Aviation Administration said that it closed the airspace over Bethel Park for “special security reasons.”
When Thomas Crooks was 17, he made a $15 donation to ActBlue, a political action committee that raises money for left-leaning and Democratic politicians, according to a 2021 Federal Election Commission filing.
The donation was earmarked for the Progressive Turnout Project, a national group that rallies Democrats to vote. The groups did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Mr Crooks’ father, Matthew, 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.
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