The FBI has identified the shooter at Saturday’s Trump rally as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, a resident of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Crooks fired shots at former President Donald Trump from a rooftop outside the rally’s security perimeter on Saturday before being fatally shot by Secret Service agents.
The chaotic scene, described by witnesses as “bloody,” resulted in one fatality among rally attendees, with two others critically injured. Despite being struck near his ear, Trump reassured supporters of his well-being on social media before returning to Newark, New Jersey, late Saturday night.
Crooks, who graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022, was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania. This election marked his first opportunity to cast a vote. Records also show that a donor listed as Thomas Crooks with the same address gave $15 to a Democratic-aligned political action committee called the Progressive Turnout Project in January 2021.
During the shooting, Crooks didn’t have any identification on his body, so agents had to “run his DNA and get biometric confirmation,” according to authorities. The FBI’s ongoing investigation urges the public to share any relevant information.
