Trump rally shooter ID’ed as Thomas Matthew Crooks by FBI

July 14, 2024

Republican candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024. Rebecca Droke | Afp | Getty Images

Law enforcement authorities have identified the man who made an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

The FBI said the shooter, who is dead, was identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. A motive was not clear.

The gunman was immediately “neutralized” by the Secret Service, chief of communications Anthony Guglielmi said.

Crooks used a semi-automatic rifle, three senior U.S. law enforcement officials said, based on what was found at the scene.

Bethel Park is a predominantly white, relatively well-to-do city in the southern reaches of greater Pittsburgh. The site of the rally, Butler, is about an hour’s drive north of Pittsburgh.

Pennsylvania voter records listed a Thomas Matthew Crooks with the same address and birth date as a registered Republican, though it was not clear from the records when that was put in place.

At a news conference Saturday night, law enforcement said the investigation was close to making a positive identification of the shooter, who did not have identification on him, state police Lt. Col. George Bivens said.

“The shooter has been tentatively identified,” he said. “It’s a matter of doing biometric confirmations.”

Investigators have also prioritized finding a motive and determining whether the shooter had accomplices, authorities said at the news conference.