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Authorities identified the shooter as a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, a city about an hour’s drive from the scene of the shooting.
By Campbell Robertson, Jack Healy, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, and Glenn Thrush
He was interested in chess and coding and had recently earned an associate’s degree in engineering science. His best classmates at school remembered him as a wise student who had few friends but never showed any blatant red flags. The nursing home where he painted helping to prepare food said his paintings did not explain the reason for the “concern. ”
And at a time when other people his age were posting tons of non-public data online, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks left few clues about who he was, what he believed, or why he attended a Trump rally out west. of Pennsylvania on January 11. Saturday. Attempted assassination of the former president.
On Sunday, federal investigators said a gunman named Mr. Crooks used an AR-15-style rifle purchased through his father to open fire from a rooftop outside the rally where Mr. Crooks was speaking. In a series of new details, the F. B. I. Authorities said they were investigating the incident as an imaginable case of domestic terrorism and that the shooter left explosive cloths in the vehicle leading to the event.
But many other important points about Mr Crooks were still unclear. The federal government said he had no obvious history of mental aptitude problems or past threats, and was not on the radar of federal authorities.
Investigators have been tracking his online presence and rushing to access his phone, but so far they haven’t uncovered any hint of strongly held political beliefs. In fact, the clues he left behind were confusing: he was a registered Republican, but he had also donated to a progressive cause in 2021; His parents were registered democrats and libertarians.
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